It’s time to start thinking about holiday decorating, my friends.  How do we feel about that"  Excited" Stressed" Maybe both"  I know I get a bit stressed when the job of decorating the house for the holidays rolls around each year.  As a blogger, there is the added pressure of making it new and different each year.  This year, I have to say, the house came together pretty easily.  And I’ll tell you why.  I got a bunch of bottle brush trees and covered every surface of the house with them.  Every. single surface.  Never have you ever seen so many little trees in one house.  It’s bottle-brush madness, and I pretty much love it.  It really did make decorating for the holidays so easy.  It’s like Beyonce always says, “If you like it, then you better put a tree on it….” or something like that. Today’s holiday mantel post kicks off the first holiday post of 2018!  I’m thrilled to be joining a fabulous group of bloggers on a mantel blog hop today hosted by the lovely and talented Krista from The Happy Housie.  See the entire lineup at the end of this post.

As is custom in this house, there are little vignettes everywhere.  Vignettes galore.  I love to start with a tray for most of my little vignettes.  This tray has been such a good one over the years.  I use it again and again and again.

A few of these pieces I already had on the tray, but I added a few small bottle brush trees ...