Valentine's Day already?

I can't believe that is has been a week since my birthday. But what I couldn't believe is that I went shopping and there was Valentine's day items out already. It was really without a beat that we moved from one holiday to the next around here. So this weekend I finally started packing up Christmas. Speaking of Christmas here is a photo of the family on Christmas Day at my Father & Mother in law's place.

 I wish that I could say that we had a great holiday well we we did have a great time after everyone got over the food poisoning that they had. It was truly a bad cause of it here.  We went to several Christmas parties in our neighborhood and none of them made us sick, but a neighbor came and gave us some cookies and my littlest one got into them. I honestly told my hubby to toss them because we didn't know the neighbors well enough to eat their food and the wife usually doesn't even speak to me or my kids at all when we speak and wave to them. So I asked him to toss the snacks. He didn't listen and he gave some to our youngest and he had some too. They both were sick within an hour (maybe more like 30 mins) and it was bad. Real bad. So my rule of tossing things like that will be honored because he now understands.

Well I went to several stores because I wanted to get some items for our mantel and get it decorated why I was motivated to do Valentine's Day because usually Christmas would be up until the end of the month and then I would just do Spring. Not Valentine's Day but because our anniversary is two days before I decided that the mantel this year needed to celebrate our day of love. I'm working on it...it is a process honestly. I really want it to look nice and somehow that in my mind includes a bunting, a couple of frames, photos and more. I'm excited because I haven't done much with photos of our wedding. And somehow I have been consumed with getting this mantel done. I have also been reorganizing my space. I have also been sucked into the washi tape world too. I do have to say that I never got the whole washi tape craze when it first started but using it on the edges of my planner pages makes it a necessity now.LOL.

But here is the start of the mantel that I'm working on. I realized something today. I have lost my picture taking skills. Photos that I have taken all seem to be blurred somewhat. I think I need to learn my new camera, but really I also think that I haven't been taking photos so I have lost a really good skill of not taking blurred photos.

I also see now that I need to finish painting and correct some paint issues. I think this is going to be cute and most items were things that I had around the house. I will add more photos of the finished product.