Sewing? no. Decorating? yes.

Still no sewing or smocking, but there's been a whole lotta decorating going on here. See?

This is the landing of the main staircase in our house. Here's a shot of the mid-landing about three-fourths of the way up, where the stairs turn:

Here's a close up of one of the newel posts on the mid-landing:

Draping and decorating this staircase takes a LOT of time....it took Number One son and me about five hours to do this today, which was actually pretty fast. We've been doing it for about 15 years, so it does get faster with time. The first time we did it, it took 3 days. Now we know how much drape it needs and how much STUFF you need to make it look good.

Although it would be much simpler and quicker, we don't do it the same way every year. We've had a variety of trims and ribbons and ornaments on it in the past, but this is the first time we've used the gold beads. This year it is made of up about 300 feet of garland, around 3000 little white lights, and about 75 yards of gold lame fabric.

We also put up another tree today (we're up to three already) and I just want one more.....the bird tree. I'll put up pictures of the other two trees tomorrow--it's hard to photograph trees at night.

And who knows? Maybe I'll smock something tomorrow....I have one to finish, one to cut out, and a little idea for a tiny little smocked something special. We'll see!