Biltmore House, 2016 Christmas Candlelight Tour

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  Can you believe yet another year is about to come to a close?  I'm going to keep the talk to a minimum here, because I can't wait to share these pictures with you.  This year, we were allowed to take pictures inside the Biltmore House during the candlelight tour, and we were trés excited about this.  ;)  Of course, people weren't allowed to use a flash (understandably) and the lighting was a bit of a challenge, but I think Hal captured some amazing shots.  I took a bunch of pictures on my iPhone, but I haven't even looked at all those yet.  You might want to get a cup of coffee, tea, or hot chocolate, because this is a picture-heavy post. 

Christmas in the Living Room

Hi everyone!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are taking things easy today.  We did and we are. 😉

In an earlier post, I promised I'd share some pictures of our Christmas living room and foyer.  I don't have the foyer pictures ready yet, but here is the living room all decked out for Christmas.

Merry Christmas

"For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father,  the Prince of Peace."

2016 Christmas Card Exchange

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love!"~Hamilton Wright Mabie

Hello friends.  Can you believe we only have a week left until Christmas day?  Have you finished your preparations?  I haven't, but I'm working on it.

I'm joining Amy at Love Made My Home, for the Christmas card exchange that Amy was kind enough to organize for us this year.  This is the third year Amy has hosted this fun Christmas event for bloggers.  Once everyone had signed up for the exchange, Amy matched us up with someone to send and receive a card from.  This is the first time I've participated, and I thought it was great fun.

My partner in the Christmas card exchange was Vee, who blogs at A Haven For Vee.  I have been fortunate to get acquainted with Vee through our mutual blogs over the past four or five years.  She is a very dear person, and I was so excited to send a card to her.

Our Christmas Dining Room and a Tablescape

Hi everyone!  Have you all been busy as bees?  I've been absent once again -- trying to get Christmas done here at Forest Manor.  Whew!  I still have so much left to do, but I wanted to share a bit of our home with you today.

I have several tablescapes in mind for Christmas this year, but this may be the only one I have time to do.  It's not a typical look for Christmas, but I really love it.  Last year, I saw two or three pretty blue and white Christmas tables, and I fell in love with the look.  I had honestly never thought of using blue and white for Christmas.  There was a really lovely one in my Southern Lady magazine last December.  That table featured blue and white Christmas dishes.  I don't have any blue and white Christmas dishes, but I decided I could use my Staffordshire "Liberty Blue" ironstone dishes.

I Love Christmas Music

Happy December everyone.  I hope you're having a good week.  I'm doing it again folks; I just can't help myself -- I love to share my favorite Christmas music here in December.  I'm always behind the trends on everything, so I hope you're not sick of this song already.

Anywho, I think this is a pretty song with the cutest video.  Hope you enjoy!

Have a great day and thank you for stopping by!

Hugs,

Denise

Replacements, Ltd. at Christmastime

Hi everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and enjoyed a harvest feast with loved ones.  We had a wonderful holiday and a scrumptious Thanksgiving meal.  

I'm knee-deep in Christmas decorations, so I've decided to re-publish a few of my older Christmas posts this week.  Today's post was originally published back in December of 2011 -- my very first year of blogging.  I did a little bit of editing to the original post and if you haven't seen this one yet, I hope you thoroughly enjoy it.  My husband and I had paid a visit to Replacements Ltd., in November of that year to pick up some dishes we'd purchased, and while we were there Hal took some photos of their marvelous Christmas displays.  Their Christmas dishes and accessories were swoon worthy!

ORIGINAL POST:  This post is for dishaholics everywhere. We made a trip to Replacements, Ltd., today, and I just had to share these pictures with all of you.  The store is just outside of Greensboro, and it takes us about an hour to get there.  We've been several times before, but never at Christmas; and oh my goodness, I couldn't believe the decorations and gorgeous displays.  They always have beautiful things, but this was some serious eye candy.  We took so many pictures, I'll have to make this a two-part post.  I wanted to share the Christmas pictures this evening for Seasonal Sundays, so here goes.  You can find Part 2 of the tour Here.