Christmas Time is Here

2021 Christmas tour in our 1907 Victorian house.

A few years ago I posted a huge Christmas tour where we went all out decorating because we were on a home tour for charity. Here is that link.

This year I’d like to show you how we normally do Christmas and the fun traditions and things we reserve for this incredibly special time.

Surely everyone is aware if the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o’clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.
-Thomas De Quincey

Christmas starts the weekend before Thanksgiving when I put up the electric candles in the windows. This is a big job and usually takes all day as I also clean behind the furniture. (When you live in a Victorian house a lot of your furniture is in front of windows.) Candles in the windows are one of my top decorating pleasures for winter. I ADORE the way it makes our home look so cozy and welcoming !

The day after Thanksgiving we bring up the tubs from the basement and our tree. Our tree was left here by a previous owner along with many other handy things. Everyone has a box for their ornaments. Our family decorates the tree together and then I add our Santas, glass balls, and bows to tie it all together. Daddy climbs the stairs to put on the star and angel.

I do the garlands, my daughter does her tree in her room and helps me do the little tree for my art room. I love to decorate the studio and have so much fun with my woodland tree!

Special toys like our Playmobil medieval village and nativity are brought out and set up. The dollhouse cabinet is opened and the dollhouse played with.

The kitchen and dining room are set with Christmas tablecloths. The Prairie Green Frankoma casually adds Christmas cheer in the kitchen and our wedding china, Noritake Stoneleigh, glistens next to crystal goblets on the dining room table for big family dinners.

Very soon the tables will be laden with as many as 70 giant gingerbread cookies at a time in various stages of being decorated as my daughter and I prepare gifts for teachers, bosses, friends, and family. Oh, the smell of gingerbread…heaven. Here is my complete how-to!

Gingerbread, candles, hot cocoa by the fire as we watch our favorite Christmas movies all makes for great memories.

But what to do when it is over? It can be hard to go back to a simpler decor in the starkness of winter. I usually try to pack up Christmas on New Year’s day or Eve, but I leave the candles up for a few more weeks and the studio tree. That helps, as well as the nesting instinct that always kicks in after putting away Christmas. That’s when I start doing home projects and cleaning/de-cluttering missions.