Stockings hung by the fire

When I got out the Christmas decorations this year, I pitifully taped our stockings to the wall.  Ellis tore them down in a heartbeat, and has ever since considered them to be mittens used for giving high-fives.  So I decided that our stockings should be hung on a mantle this year, which wouldn't be easy because mantles come with fireplaces, and who has ever heard of a fireplace in a place like this?   

A Pinterest search, several trips down to recycling to retrieve cardboard, sponges to create faux bricks, lots of glue, bamboo yule-logs, and many popsicle sticks later, we had a holiday hearth.  It fell down pretty much immediately after we put it up, and it's spent more time in a heap on the floor than in its proper place.   Reuben is rigging it up with some sticks of bamboo as I write this, in fact.  

It won't last forever, but it'll serve as a forever-reminder of how ridiculous we can be and to what great lengths we are willing to go just to hang a stocking.