And the Stockings Were Hung By the Chimney with Care......

The hubby declared that my mantle just didn't look like Christmas without the stockings in place.....I searched high and I searched low and finally found enough 3M hooks and sticky tape to hang up all eight stockings!

Dad's, Mom's, Big Brother's, his Fiance's, Big Sister's, Little Sister's, the Dog's and yes even the Cat has a stocking!  Mom & Dad's stockings are the dark colored ones!

I was a little nervous about hanging these up as we had an "incident" last year with the 3M hooks.  Don't get me wrong ~ neither the hooks or the tape failed, but rather our paint job failed!  When we painted our mantle we did not clean the surface first so apparently the paint did not adhere as well as it should have......if you look close you can see the patch job in the center.  A large chunk of paint peeled right off along with the hook that was holding up last year's decorations.

We have since been able to determine that just because your house is new and the paint is fresh you still need to prep the walls to remove any accumulated dust.  We live in a very "dusty" area so we are pretty sure that the dust was to blame.  It looks pretty now, but when Santa visits he will have to leave the filled stockings on the kitchen table right next to his half eaten milk and cookies!
Merry Christmas!