Thanks.

I feel like I'm breaking some sort of rule.  It's been an entire week since Thanksgiving, and I'm going to bring it up again.  Go ahead.  Feel free to gasp.  Every other person in the universe has charged full steam toward the glittering, pine-scented, stocking-stuffed, hot chocolate-y, Rudolph-infested day we like to call Christmas.  "Infested" makes it sound terrible.  You know what I mean.  I'm in love with Christmas, I'd just like to have at least a week to properly procrastinate on my Thanksgiving musings, without feeling like the lone beacon of Thanksgivingness.  Can a girl catch a break?  I mean, I still have leftovers in my refrigerator!  Granted, they're probably no longer good, but they're there!  This is turning out to be less about Thanksgiving, and more about my motivation problem...

So we had family!  Lots of them.  And instead of cleaning my house in anticipation of their arrival, I whipped out some gold glitter spray paint and created a Thanksgiving wonderland on my mantle.  Behold.

Is "wonderland" too strong? 

Really get in there and soak up some of that glitter.  Don't really.  I'm sure it's hazardous and not intended for soaking.

It's hard to properly portray that extreme glitteriness of this spray paint.  You know what isn't hard to portray?  The price tag on the back of my chipboard letter that I was too lazy to remove.  This "project" took approximately ten minutes.  Plus drying time.  I just sprayed the letters not very carefully, then took some extra linen material, burlap and a ribbon I had on hand, and cut out my flags and letters for the "Give" banner, and hot glued them to the ribbon.  Sooo quick and easy.  

I got my extra fancy (and extra free!) Thanksgiving printable, from here.  Oh, and I stuck a Command strip to the back of that frame and just smooshed it in a approximately the correct place.  Don't tell my husband I didn't use a level...

So where were we.  Ah yes.  Festive mantle, dirty house.  But hey, it wouldn't feel like company if I weren't dashing about mopping or something as they walk in the door.

Is it just me, or do you feel like this post is turning into a gigantic confession?  Lack of motivation, laziness, procrastination...

Well, things got cleaned, and we had a grand time.  Here's a representation of most of the party animals occupying my house.  We're missing Grandma...she came the next day.  We've got Anthony's twin brother, Andrew with his wife Rachel, and their three girls: Alayna, Hannah and June.  That's Anthony's sister Angela in the middle.  Lots o' Johnsons.

Rather than give you a play-by-play of the week (though I'm sure it would be riveting), I'll leave you with a few of my favorite pictures.

And by "favorite pictures", I mean mostly pictures of my adorable nieces.

Hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving!