In hopes of St. Nicholas

I don't have a fireplace...so I don't have a mantle to decorate.

Yes, it's very, very sad!

Luckily, however, I do have a gorgeous buffet that I bought of off KSL.com for $80 a year ago (and I was in Montana at the time, so I made my sister drop everything and go get it for me!).

In my house, it substitutes as a mantle to decorate! So here it is...my lovely buffet.


Usually I save my favorite things for last, but this time I'm going to show them first! And my favorites are...the stockings!

When my first baby was born, my craftiness came out in counted-cross stitch (look here for two big Santa pictures I made for my mother). I found a darling stocking kit, and I made it up for her first Christmas. Of course, then I could do no less for the subsequent children!


I eventually had to resort to eBay to buy more stocking kits. I wanted them all to be the same size, you see...and face the same direction.


Some stockings had to "wait their turn" until I was expecting a baby of the appropriate gender! But it all worked out perfectly in the end.



There are hours and hours of work in these stockings. I have told my children that they don't really belong to them...they are mine for always! They are far and away my favorite handmade Christmas decoration.

I also made a custom board to hang and display all the stockings. "In Hopes of St. Nicholas" is a line from "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," and I used six different knobs as the stocking hangers. I love to bring it out every year!


On my buffet sits a little ceramic tree that has been a part of my Christmases for about as long as I can remember. It was made by a sweet neighbor who lived across the street from us, and my mother used to display it on her sideboard (shown here), opposite of one my grandmother made. Alas, my mother's collection of Christmas decorations has outstripped her storage capacity, so last year this little tree came home with ME! It may not be hip, or chic, or Pottery Barn...but it's home.


In keeping with all things glass and sparkly, next I have these pretty hand-made-in-Montana glass dishes (and I promise the color is much prettier in person), which hold ornaments and jingle bells for now, but Christmas candy when I get around to making some... (same for the glass boxes)



And last the candle holders, which repeat the bright green and red and hold glitter-covered candles!


Who needs a mantle anyway??

...And the winner is...

TZel

who said "I am your follower as bridgestranslation."

I will be e-mailing you with your $35 CSN Stores gift code!

(And no, I can't figure out how people put a snapshot of the random number generator in their blog posts! If anyone has any helpful suggestions, please let me know!)

It was GREAT to read everyone's comments about what they wanted to GIVE for Christmas this year! What a wonderful, thoughtful, unselfish group of women. Thank you for following along with me, and sharing a little piece of your heart this Christmas time!

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas at Mom's (part 3)

...If you missed Part 2, it is here, and Part 1 is here.

Are you beginning to understand why decorating my mother's house is not a task for the faint-hearted? The results are certainly worth it, but it's a major commitment of time and energy! I just have a few more pictures to share with you. There are places I forgot to take pictures of...maybe next year!

My mother loves garland. There is an "arch" of sorts between the kitchen and family room that gets this gorgeous garland....


The kitchen picture window gets dressed up by ropes and ropes of all things silvery and sparkly! (I really wish I could capture the sparkle!)


And here's the Christmas tree, and you can glimpse the garland between the living/family rooms above it.


My picture of just the garland didn't turn out. She purchased two pre-lit garlands from Costco a few years ago, but then she had me take off all the lights that were on it and replace them with these gold grape-cluster lights. They are really fabulous at nighttime.

My mom gave up on the "kid" ornaments many years ago, and she keeps adding to her collection of sparkly, dangly, beaded-y, FANCE-Y -type ornaments!

...but there are two ornaments that don't seem to quite belong! Those are my dad's "Christmas Story" ornaments. One is of Ralphie in his pink bunny suit, and the other is of the kids sticking their tongues to the lightpost! My mother grimaces about those ornaments every year, but the rest of us find it highly amusing!!

At the base of the tree you will find "Papa Willow" riding Mooseltoe, surrounded by his forest friends. I think my kids have named every animal!


Ahh, but what about my favorite decorations, that I promised to show yesterday?? Well here they are:


Back in this corner of the living room are my two contributions to the Christmas overload.

This is a counted-cross stitch picture on linen I made for my mother in 1996 (well...I finished it in 1996; we won't mention when I started it). It was my gift to her, although I had to beg a sister to help pay for the matting and framing!


The second Santa picture is also counted-cross stitch over linen, and I think I finished it in 2002 or thereabouts (this time a very talented sister-in-law matted and framed it). Oh, the things I did before I had quite so many children!!


So there you have it! Christmas at Mom's. It's lavish and beautiful, and I wouldn't miss it for the world!

Christmas at Mom's (part 2)

If you missed Part 1, you can find it here!

....And so the decorating continued at my mother's house! It is like a treasure hunt to open box after box after box of beautiful Christmas decorations, and then decide where to put them all!

This little white vignette is in the (now) guest room. Lots of sparkly garland, lights, and fluffy snow complement a white-robed Father Christmas, and three polar bears named "Echo, Frank, and Holly." Really. That's what it says on the box! (But I think my niece wrote that in! ;-))


There are two china cabinets, but I think I forgot to take a picture of one of them. No matter; this one is my favorite. The five glass candleholders are etched with forest animals. I added some fake snow, pinecones, and pine garland, and then about 30 fat little birds. We call them "mushroom birds," although I have no idea why!


This little magazine table sports a new acquisition. If you're a Costco shopper, you may recognize this snowman from one of their recent magazines. He's super cute.


Although most of my mother's decorations are "new," (meaning they weren't around when *I* was a kid), the Nativity scene is an exception. It graces the piano. The Holy Family are from Anri, and they are so beautiful. The rest of the pieces are ceramic, and they were painted by my paternal grandmothers many years ago. Are they valuable, like the Anri pieces? Well, not in monetary terms, but they mean the world to me!



The sideboard is one of my favorite pieces of furniture. It was a Christmas gift for my mother many, many years ago, and it is one of her most prized possessions. It is such fun to decorate for Christmas!

She started collecting Fitz & Floyd figures several years ago, and they take up most of the space.
The little ceramic Christmas tree on the left is another piece my grandmother made. It has been in our home as long as I can remember.

These little plates on the bottom, though, are the real treasure. My mother china-painted for many years (she is not able to do it any more), and she created some amazing works of art. I love these four bird plates (and yes, I realize you can only see three)!


Tomorrow...the Christmas tree, and my two favorite decorations!

Christmas at Mom's (part 1)

Happy December!

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday, filled with friends, family, and good food!

I had what you might call a "working holiday," but I wouldn't have it any other way! My dear mother is in very poor health, so while I am with my parents, I try to do all the things she can't do any more. In particular, this Thanksgiving break was the time for me to do the Christmas decorating!

....and my mother doesn't believe in doing anything half-way....

EVERY surface in five rooms gets decorated. My parents have been living in that house for about 40 years now. There are a LOT of surfaces!

And my mother has also collected a LOT of Christmas decorations. When I was a little girl, we had one deep closet dedicated to Christmas decorations. When the children moved out, my mother also commandeered the basement bedroom...and not just the closet! There are decorations stacked in boxes in a heap on the floor, and wreaths in bags hung all over the walls! And last (but certainly not least), several years ago my Dad put up an 8' x 5' shed specifically to hold more Christmas stuff! Suffice it to say, decorating my mother's house is not a task for the faint-hearted...or time-pressed!

There are three bookcases in the hall. One of them gets a simple garland and a stuffed snowman and penguin (this was probably the last one I did, actually, and I may have been getting tired ;-)).


The next one is little more elaborate: two garlands, and more stuffed snowmen! Oh, and a couple of candle holders with berries.


Some are focuses less on cute-sy, and more on the reason for the season.

I love the gorgeous pink and silver poinsettias.

This gorgeous bookcase is in the living room. It has these amazing spindles on the back and sides, that you can't see right now! The tall glass candleholders are hand-etched with pinecones. Two bronze deer, more garland, some snowy pinecones and sprakly poinsettias complete this vignette.


This antique cabinet in the entry way gets gussied up with crystal and glass. There are reindeer, polar bears, and skating snowmen!


More to come!