So What Do I Love about my Holiday Home?

That was the assignment: tell in words and pictures what you like about your own holiday home, as assigned by Karla at http://karlascottage.typepad.com for today, 12-12-07. As of 8:30 p.m. eastern time there were 136 gorgeous responses. I cannot urge you enough to click this link to enjoy seeing decorating styles and decorations from around the world.

I took the easy way out this morning, because I only had about five minutes before work to upload some photos and get linked up to Karla's blog. No time to write anything. But after a long day of meetings and a two-hour-plus drive home, I still felt guilty when I read the comments and looked at all the other lovely posts. So here goes:

Every year I think we all enjoy getting out all the old ornaments and remembering how they came to be. The DH and I have ornaments from our own childhood trees, and the kids have ornaments they made for us as gifts as well as funny pictures from baby's first Christmas or a pre-school class photo ornament. We also have tried to buy souvenir ornaments on our travels and have received some as gifts, so we remember those spots. It's funny, but we also remember some of the ones that have been broken over the years (mostly by the cats), and then we hang ornaments with pictures of all our prior cats!

Most of the time the house is pretty neutral- a lot of off white- so I like breaking out the red this time of year, from afghans to poinsettias to bears with striped sweaters. We look forward to wrapping the presents, and I'm a stickler for not using crappy bows or tags that clash. I figure you should show some care in presentation to the recipient, even if the recipient is two and would prefer to eat the bow.

I also like the smells of Christmas, and although we've had fake trees the last couple of years (another cat necessity), I like to light candles, burn potpourri, use plug-ins and anything I can get to add the scent of pine and cinnamon and spice and vanilla. Clearly, this blog also demonstrates I like to break out the Christmas music- anything goes - from Frank and Dean to Beyonce and indie and alternative artists.

The other thing I like to think about this time of year has nothing to do with my house now but the house of my childhood. I have distinct memories of age five to 11. Before my father died and our family unit and extended family were forever changed, we had grand celebrations. Although it was only a three-bedroom ranch, and small at that, it seemed like a mansion with my mother's decorating. She was Martha before Martha was in heels. I distinctly remember the search for a perfect live tree, not just for the perfect shape, of course, but because it would then be left at the nursery, Sczezny's in fact, to be flocked a different color each year and picked up later. I can remember white, pink and blue for sure. In fact, I do not ever remember growing up with a green tree, how funny is that? I thought it was perfectly normal at the time.

The tree would then be decorated to coordinate with the flocking. I remember absolutely gorgeous, elaborate ornaments with velvet and ribbon and jewels. There were incredible detailed balls, like Faberge eggs. There were gilded angels with harps, drums, skiing angels, encrusted bells and baubles, and a beautiful angel for the topper. Many of these ornaments were pink; I can definitely remember a white tree with all pink ornaments. I remember pink and olive. I'm pretty sure we had all pink lights some years- the big, fat, old-fashioned bulbs.

Besides the tree and the pretty little nativity scene underneath, I remember my excitement the few years my dad felt well enough to put a huge wooden santa and all his reindeer up on our roof or in our front bushes. It was literally life-size, and I thought it was the most exciting thing in the world to see, along with the big plastic light-up snowman on the porch. I guess all these have been replace by giant balloons for some reason-perhaps so they can deflate and hang around until spring?

So I guess that explains why I have a white tree with pink ornaments this year, my first attempt. I will admit to brown and turquoise the two years before this. But, we still do a "normal" tree also, as pictured below. I also have a six foot skinny green tree, sort of Charlie Brown-ish for all primitive and country ornaments, but I did not do that one this year. In fact, I am slowly learning it doesn't all have to be perfect to be perfect. And I am learning memories are just as important as the actual ornaments. I can see clearly all those childhood ornaments and with both my parents gone now 35 and 9 years respectively, no one left has any idea what happened to all those ornaments and lights. But we all remember them.

Welcome to My Holiday Open House!

It's another wonderful blog party heard 'round the world. On Wednesday, Dec. 12 be sure to visit http://karlascottage.typepad.com/ for a holiday open house linking my home to many more decorated homes for you to view. I know Karla's will be fab, and many promise to be much more elaborate than what I have done. Here's a few pics from me, but tomorrow (or depending upon when you are reading this) click on Karla's blog above and there you will find links to all the homes in the tour.

Trees 2, 3 and 4 Done. Check. Check. Check.

Black Friday is the greatest day of the year for staying home, sleeping in, decorating, eating leftovers, baking something, ordering pizza and decorating some more. Today I not only managed to get a handle on the overload of Thanksgiving dishes, (dishwasher loads, that is), but I also went through more basement storage to bring up my office tree, put out my outside tree and find all the supplies for the big tree in the family room.

It was spitting snow and freezing while I was out gathering up plants and gourds, changing flags, rigging up a park bench vignette and, yes, spray painting a wreath. I never seem to do any of this when it is warm. My wreath turned out well, with some quick spritzes of silver, gold and spray snow on a formerly red, white and blue wreath. I made a fancy gold bow and was all set. The outside tree is heavily flocked, a former prop from Bath and Body Works. I have a plethora of $1 trees for various seasons from BBW. Gotta have connections.

My office tree is 3', kind of vintage Victorian, reds and golds, with some glass hearts and a Capiz shell angel on top. The family room tree is traditional greem with all of the kids' handmade ornaments on it, some of mom and dad's childhood ornaments, some Hallmark sentimental year ones and some with pictures of our former cats, Myrtle, Murphy, Maynard and Mookie. We so look forward to getting all of these out every year.

Also here is an up-close shot of one of my six 'Besty' ornaments on my pink tree from Sadie Lou Who on Etsy or here http://craftilyeverafter.blogspot.com.

Decorating is mostly done, except for some snomen here and there, and the basement family room. That one gets a skinny prim tree, if I put it out. We remodeled the basement into more of a retro-modern Pier 1/Pottery Barn American casual look this year, and I am not sure the old country primitive ornaments are going to work. But then, four trees are just as good as five.

And We're Off! On Dasher and Dancer and Larry and Lester...to the Next Holiday

No sooner were the turkey pans, Tupperwares and cool whip tubs put away than the television (translation: el futbol) came on, and I hightailed it across town (that's about five blocks total where I live) to erect my first of five trees.

This was the first year for the pink tree in the living room. Actually, it is a white tree with fuschia and silver ornaments. I can't decide how I feel; I'm almost preferring my brown and turquoise decorations from the past couple of years. At least they coordinated with the living room. I must have said "No, Larry" at least 25, maybe 50 times while putting on the ornaments. Larry is a cat. The naughty one. The one who eats large pieces of fabric and other miscellaneous to send himself to the hospital for nearly two weeks. But, I digress.

As for the tree colors, if I make a change it won't be the first time in history a tree has come down before Christmas. More than once I've had to completely replace lights on a tree, or re-erect -maybe it's resurrect- a tree where the cats have played hide and seek. We finally and begrudgingly switched to artificial trees after a gazillion too many needles and ruined carpet and packages from cats knocking the tree water out of the stand. It helped that we got a 7' green for free and a new white 7' K-Martha tree for $10. Last year I actually put away the living room tree before Christmas to make more room for company and because it looked so bedraggled after four weeks of cat terrorizing.

So one is up so far. Tomorrow it will be the traditional tree in the family room that gets attention. And I'll put my outside tree out to replace the fall/orange-y decorations that must come in. We're lucky to have so many pine trees so I can cut branches to fill my planter boxes.

Lilly London, my Blythe, also went to Thanksgiving (just so the in-laws could continue to think I'm wacko), and here she's helping SIL Judi light her grapevine tree. I also changed my table from a setting I'd had all summer and fall to this late late fall and winter display that can last through Christmas. So, slowly but surely the decorations are flowing.

A Bunch of Wonderful Things

Yesterday I was thinking I might not even bother to put up my big Christmas tree. I thought I might not even do my other big one- a white artificial for which I have all new fuschia and silver ornaments I haven't even used yet. Bah, humbug.

Today I wake up to huge snowflakes, and it is all good! First things first. New holiday music for my blog- quite an eclectic mix if you check my playlist at the bottom of the screen. Project Playlist is great fun for mixing your own collection.

Trees? Not today, but soon. Still the big one for the family room seems to take up the entire room, and I could do without it. But, it has all the traditional family ornaments, the adults' childhood ornaments, ya know, so we really have to. Plus, the DH likes to watch television by tree-light- even if he likes the big, yucky, multi-color lights instead of little twinkly white ones.

Yesterday I received the most amazing sort-of-ATC, sort-of-art-doll (shown here) from Carol Stocker, a fellow ARTchick from Spirit's Journey http://spiritsjourneydesigns.blogspot.com/. We did a 1:1 trade. Hope she likes her Mercat. No, not meerkat. Or whatever they are.

Today is the opening day to register for Art & Soul in Hampton, VA http://www.artandsoulretreat.com/ for May 1-5, 2008. I sorted out my classes last night and hope I get my first choice. Meanwhile, I also emailed Elaine http://www.alphabetstudiobyelainethomas.com/ in Ohio of Artful Spirit to see if she is going and would like to ride with me. Lucky for me, she said yes! That will make the trip so much more fun and easy. I wish it were now! Elaine makes incredibly neat, wonderful stuff and may have a table at vendor night at A&S. Check out her site or her Flickr photos.

I first "met" Elaine when she so kindly bought my creation "Hope will Always See a Star" for the ZNE Hope Sees a Star fund raiser auction. My piece is shown here again and one of Elaine's creations.

And if all this were not fabulous enough, I took the plunge and ordered an ADG Blythe brunette who only has to travel from Illinois to Indiana and so should probably be here about the same time as Lilly from Tokyo. I think I will take my time coming up with a name for this one. I may have to whip out my crochet hook and sewing machine and create some fashions. There are amazing intricate outfits for sale on ebay and etsy both. It's a whole other world. And to those who find any part of this post weird, I say, as any good Blythe would, "whatever!"