Christmas Notebook

See part one of the open house tour in this post: open house 2016 ~ part one

We will take up the tour in the kitchen. It’s the center of holiday activity! The doorway on the left side of the picture leads into the front hall. The kitchen was an enclosed back porch at one time. The window back and to the left looks into the dining room. During the party, it helps the kitchen elves keep an eye on the cookie table for reloading cookie trays. Just prior to the party…the cookies are stacked and ready to go!

The windows of the kitchen face east and south. Lots of great light in this room! A garland and my collection of snowflakes and icicles decorate the windows. The ceiling is 12′ high, so we hang large snowflakes from the ceiling using clear Command hooks and mirrored garlands.

The shelves over the kitchen table were made for us by a friend. They are one of my favorite things in the kitchen. DH made the “days until” chalkboard for me several years ago.

Did you get a Christmas mouse at the open house?

A friend brought this Grinch tree over on Saturday. So cute! We placed it on the dresser in the kitchen and put a Whoville-ish Putz house under it.

To the right of the above picture is the door to the room we call the “music room.” So called because our piano is in that room. Otherwise, the room acts as a hallway. It has a door in each wall and two windows! A door to the kitchen, a door to the addition, a door to the library, and a door to the front hall.

On the desk in the music room, we put a slender tree with some of the ornaments from my nativity collection. Also on the desk are the the three wise men and their gift boxes.

And in this case, a cat named Clark…

The door by the desk leads to the library and the door on the right leads to the front hall. On the wall above the piano, shelves display some of my Christmas china.

Pictures of the kids at Christmas decorate the top of the piano. Many of these pictures were used in our Christmas cards over the years.

The chiffarobe was moved to this room when I was using it as a craft space. Now that I am back upstairs in my own craft room, the chiffarobe is used to store kitchen items that aren’t needed every day, but are handy to have nearby. The tree on top the chiffarobe holds a small collection of vintage ornaments my mother-in-law gave to me.

The round table in the middle of the room has a small aluminum tree decorated with vintage ornaments. This picture was taken right before the open house, before my pile of devices was moved.

The favorite decoration in the music room has to be the chalkboard. DH painted the green chalkboard on the wall in 2011. This is our fifth year to decorate it with a chalk tree. To find pictures to use, I google the theme I’ve decided on and “coloring pages.” The designs have to be modified a little. I take out extra details we don’t need and size the picture to fit the space. Genny does the chalking. I plan to share some of the process in another blog post.

From the music room, we move into the library. The buffet was added to the house in 1922 when it underwent a renovation. We took out the drawers and installed shelves below to hold the grands’ toys. Our dear friend Gary made the beautiful stained glass windows to fit the doors above.

The nativity on the buffet is one Oldest Daughter brought back from Liberia several years ago when she spent three months there working in an orphanage.

To the left of the buffet are the wonderful shelves we found in this room when we bought the house in 1996.

This black rocking chair belonged to DH’s great-great grandmother.

And this rocking chair came from DH’s mother’s family.

During the open house, I sat at the desk in the library to greet guests. A tray of cookies and a bowl of Candy Jumble gave them a place to refresh their cookie plates. During the open house, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” played on the television.

We had some extra special visitors. My father drove down with one of my brothers and one of my sisters. My paternal aunt and uncle drove over two hours to get here. One of my paternal cousins came with her grand-daughter and guest. My maternal aunt and uncle arrived, with two of their daughters and their son-in-law. Here I am talking with my cousin and her husband. It was wonderful to see so many family members at the open house.

The main attraction in the library is the “glass tree.” All the ornaments on the tree are made of glass. There are more than 250 prisms on the tree.

The west door in the music room leads to the addition. This was added as one large room by the previous owner. When we renovated the house before moving in, we divided it into a large bedroom, the hallway, a laundry room and a bathroom. We’ll visit the addition in the next open house tour post.

I hope you enjoyed this part of the tour! Follow this link to part three. Open House / Part Three

~~Rhonda