Christmas Notebook

A beautiful day for a great open house. We had about 190 guests. A few drove quite a ways to be here and we thank them for that gift. It was wonderful to see you!

We thank everyone who had a hand in getting ready for this big day. My sister Genny, my daughter Sarah, sons and daughters-in-law, our granddaughter, our dear friend Laurie who dropped by Saturday to help clean…lots of helping hands!

After two and a half inches of rain on Friday, we were glad to see Sunday’s weather. Sunny during the afternoon. A high in the low 40s. Very nice. I am sure it encouraged attendance. DH and I both totally forgot about taking pictures. We were so busy greeting guests. If anyone has pictures from the open house, I would be grateful to have them. My new friend Dana gave me permission to use the pictures she took. Thanks, Dana!

Ready for company! I wish you could see it at night. There’s a tree in almost every window.

The main attraction in the living room is the Family Tree. I love tinsel on a Christmas tree! I wish a picture could show you how beautiful it is at night, with the lights on and the tree rotating.

The nativity in the living room is backed by a Christmas tree.

In the dining room, you will find the cookie table with punch. Coffee is set up on the buffet in the same room. By the way, the window looking into the kitchen may seem odd placing, but the kitchen used to be a back porch, added to the house in the early 1920s, more than fifty years after the house was built.

One of the frames on the table is a list of gluten free goodies. The other is a guide to truffle flavors.

The dining room has the Snow Tree and also a smaller decorated tree on top the cupboard, which you can see in the picture of the cookie table. Our younger daughter put the snowflakes on the windows. She planned to do the top half, too, but was sick for several days and not able to finish the tops of the windows. She’s feeling better, so maybe this week!

The “library” serves as our family room. The tree in the bay is the Nativity Tree. All the ornaments are nativity related. This is an older picture, but the tree is pretty much the same each year. Just more ornaments. 🙂

I made the ribbon for the Nativiy Tree years ago. It contains the Scripture from Luke 2:1-20.

The Three Kings Tree is also in the library.

Snow White was totally enamored with her six week old second cousin. She petted him, followed him around, and declared him “SOOO-OH Cu-UTE!” to anyone who would listen. She said he was the first baby she ever got to touch. He seemed to make quite an impression! His mama was sweet about sharing her little one.

From the library, you can enter the “music” room. So called because it is the room where our piano resides. This room had three trees this year. One large and two smaller. The large tree is the Bubble Light Tree. Along with light strings and bubble lights, it is decorated with mouth-blown figural glass ornaments, vintage Christmas postcards from DH’s side of the family, and fifty candles in candle clips. Never lit, of course!

The small tree on the table in the music room is new this year. It is decorated with vintage bead garlands and dark green ornaments. Two battery operated LED light strings brighten the tree.

The other tree in the music room is a small tree decorated with vintage ornaments given to me by my mother-in-law. The pictures on the piano are Christmas pictures of our children when they were much younger. The shelves over the piano hold my collection of Christmas china. I like to collect one place setting each of different patterns rather than a set of one particular pattern.

From the music room, we can walk down the hall of the addition. Our children’s baby pictures hang here. I wrap them during the holidays as gifts. Which they are!

Across from the baby pictures, on the counter, a deer hides in a basket.

And the aluminum tree nearby displays part of my collection of vintage ornaments.

This little tree in the laundry room holds more vintage ornaments.

A thrifted nativity sits on the laundry room counter.

The blue and silver tree in the downstairs guest room…

Another aluminum tree sits in the corner of the guest room.

In the guest room, I display some vintage Putz houses that my son and his wife gave me for Christmas a few years ago.

This room is also where the Putz Tree is. A white tree with light blue beads and ornaments. And, of course, my Putz houses.

We’ll head back down the hall, through the music room, and into the kitchen. The kitchen tree is on top the fridge and decorated with candy and cookie ornaments, blue beads, and blue and white lights.

The six windows in the kitchen are hung with evergreen garland. My snowflake ornament collection is displayed on the garland.

During the open house, the chalkboard declared there were only eighteen days until Christmas!

I love this little beaded garland that hangs over the chalkboard. I found it online quite a few years ago.

I am going to close out this open house tour of the downstairs with pictures of our amaryllis. I had hoped they would bloom for the party, but one opened a few days later and the other one has not yet opened. They were bought at the same place, planted at the same time, and treated exactly the same as they sat in the sun on the kitchen counter. But one is way short and one way tall! Go figure!

This post took a long time to write. I was too tired the day after the party to compose it. The next two days I was happily occupied in the craft room with my daughter-in-law as we crafted mid century Putz houses for her. A long post on that soon! And there were pictures I didn’t include. I hope to post some of those as I post more Christmas tree stories. I will work on a tour of the upstairs tomorrow. 🙂

~~Rhonda