Do you like my mantle?

I am loving it!    Except for Laura Canter’s “Days of Christmas” ModgePodge blocks (which I sort of hijacked and copied in my last post), it’s just stuff I had. There are a few old Hobby Lobby red berry branches  in the vase along with other branches I brought in from outside.    There’s Uncle Johnny’s old Bible VDOT gave me, Laura’s Christmas blocks which I already mentioned, a plant from Lowe’s (my True Love), and my window pane frame that I sprayed with chalk paint spray and  blatantly copied Pottery Barn. There’s some leftover garland from the outside…and oh…just by chance….did you notice those gold things?

Guess what they are?? They are the same gourds that you saw in the late summer and fall.  Those gourds just keep showing up on this blog here and here and here and numerous other posts!!   Yikes..if you click on those links you’ll see I was learning how to insert a picture…they were sort of L..O..N..G  as in elgonated in those posts!!

Thursday I started throwing my gourds away. It was hard. They are volunteers. They come every year. Hundreds of them.  So willing to be picked and shared.

Anyway, I was carrying them outside and tossing them into the field thinking about how glad I didn’t have to pitch for a living.    Just before I went to gather the final ten or so gourds and do a lame softball roundup pitch, I had a brilliant idea! I would NOT throw the rest of my gourds away. I’d spray paint them! Gold! For Christmas!

Cute little green gourd.   It doesn’t know it has such a “bright”  (as in golden) future in this picture!

I took my little pal outside and sprayed painted him!  He’s the one just to the right of the larger orange gourd.   Lookin’ good!

Let me tell you, I was so happy as I spray painted these gourds. I started humming and jumping around spraying everything! It was so easy! I was almost hyperventilating at this point. It’s so seldom that something works out this well for me. Well, it didn’t work out all that well as had I had this thought a bit earlier, I’d not have thrown away the other 30 or 40 gourds. I would have had an amazing pile of gold gourds! For a moment, I thought about going and hunting them in the meadow.  I just had that thought for  a moment.

Instead, I focused on my little group.

They remind me of a little choir group if there was such a thing for gourds.   The big tall one is the senior choir leader.  The little round one, but larger than the others,  is second in command.

“Tra la la…we are gourds..

Behold…we are painted gold!!”

?

“Ring…Ring!”  Is that Nashville calling about my songwriting skills?   I thought not!

Thank you for reading RiverCliff Cottage.  I hope you like it.  Please tell others about it.  I’d like to get my number of readers up a bit.   Also, if you want to receive it in your email, just “subscribe” which is at the top of this post.

Today is the first Advent Sunday in this season.    I saw a banner on my neighbor’s house…it read “Immanuel..God With Us.”     I love living in rural America.