March Madness, Martha Stewart style

  Every year at this time, I throw decorating caution to the wind and transform my living room mantle into a shrine honoring my alma mater's basketball team: The Kansas Jayhawks.  The picture above is really a "before" shot since by the time the NCCA tournament is over in - my lips to God's ears - early April, the shrine will have taken on a ticky-tacky life of its own.  Friends and family will have come for watch parties and added flowers, t-shirts, dead taxidermy prairie hawks, red and blue Mardi Gras beads, lucky Nacho buckets (don't ask) and the like - for good luck not necessarily good taste - until my humble shrine rivals Lourdes or Elvis' grave....

 God, I love basketball post-season!