I just love decorating for the holidays for a couple of reasons. The first is I love the bright colors of the holiday season - especially the red's.
The second is that it gives me an opportunity to display some of the handmade dolls and crafts I have made or bought over the last 45 years. And, yes, given my age and the number of years I've been doing this I have quite a few items in my Christmas decorations stash.
And, thirdly - it gives me the opportunity to display some of the floral craft creations I've made during this period as well. What always amazes me every year is how well the floral craft decorations I've made over the years are still as good as new. Not only do I love to make dolls, love to craft, but I also love to create pine cone baskets, silk floral arrangements, decorated Christmas trees, and wreaths.
Over the years from time to time I've shown you many of the Christmas decorations in my house. Given how many mixed media Christmas decorations I've made this year I thought some of you might be curious as to how I blended them with all the other Christmas decorations I've made or bought over the years.
I have a lot to show and several rooms so I figured I would break this down into several Linda's Blog posts so stay tuned.
Here's what's up in the family room this year.
I saw a post recently that said that vintage ceramic Christmas trees are all the rage again. Hold onto something long enough and it eventually comes back into style. I love it!
Filene's was giving away the teddy bear shown in the picture as a promotion of some sort. Based on the presents we bought we qualified for him so we took him home with us. He became our first Christmas decoration. Teddy, however, isn't just a Christmas decoration that is taken out once a year. His ego and image of himself is way too big for just once a year. As a result, he resides in the middle of the pillows on our bed each and every day as a reminder of the beginning of our lives together.
I think my mother-in-law would get a kick out of this post and of thinking about her image floating out in the web for all eternity.
This is the cabinet in my family room. It has so many knobs for drawers or cabinets that it's become a great place for hanging ornaments. All of the ornaments that are hanging there were made by me close to twenty five years ago.
There are six cubby-holes above the drawers. The Santa and candle in the upper left hand cubby-hole is one of the oldest Christmas decorations that I have.
Over twenty years ago hubby and I were shopping at a large Christmas craft fair and came to a booth where an artisan was selling handmade painted wood houses that you could personalize with a name. I chose the toy shop and my husband chose the pizza shop so they were named "Linda's" and "Jerry's Pizza", respectively.
All of the ornaments hanging on the knobs were handmade by me over the years.
On the left hand side cabinet door are two of my primitive Christmas ornaments designs that I created e-patterns for. They are “Call Me Margaretta Claus and Crazy Claus At Your Service!” More information on them is here.
Several years ago my hubby suggested that we add some festive color to the kitchen and family cabinets by decorating some fake boxes and placing them above our kitchen and family room cabinets as Christmas decorations.
All of the Christmas present decorations that are in the empty boxes above the family room and kitchen cabinets are wrapped in Christmas wrapping paper that were custom designed by me.
When hubby mentioned this I, of course, jumped at the chance to do this as I LOVE decorating the Christmas presents we give every year. For the past three decades hubby and I have utilized an assembly line approach to decorating the presents. He wraps all of them and I decorate them with beautiful wired ribbons and floral accents. For me, this is pure crafting heaven.
I love the creativity involved with trying to decide which ribbons to use, and which accessories to add. Hubby is as meticulous with the decision as to what paper to use as I am as to what ribbons and embellishments to use. However, this year, for the first time we broke with tradition and both wrapped and decorated the presents.
The presents always look so pretty when stacked together. Everyone would say that they just looked so pretty they didn't want to open their present.
For me decorating the presents is kind of the same as looking at containers filled with mixed media embellishments, or creative embroidery trims and embellishments. The trims and embellishments always look so pretty all combined in a container. Too pretty to use sometimes.
The wired ribbons are always tied in multi-loop bows and everyone knows the key to opening the presents is just pulling on the two ribbon ends and easily untying the bows. Sometimes the recipients want to keep the wired ribbon and embellishments, which is fine with me, but most know that Nana recycles all of this so they gently pull them off and put them in a giant bag that Nana has for this purpose.
On the wall to the left of my sewing area is an artificial evergreen wreath that hubby and I made 3 decades ago. He cut the wood and I painted it and embellished the wreath.
The three tier box tower was purchased at a local craft show one year that my mother and I had gone to. I added the ribbon around it and at the top.
The Santa and reindeer with the dangling feet were bought decades ago when my sister-in-law, I and two nieces were shopping out in Northampton. I saw them in a boutique and fell in love with them. The only problem with them is they are solid ceramics and very heavy so whatever box I store them in has to be filled with lighter items. It just becomes too heavy to carry.
On the little bookcase I placed two of my new mixed media Christmas decorations. One of my mixed media Santa's - Santa Leo and my mixed media "Twas The Night Before Christmas" Wood Cube Decoration.
Also one the shelf are my "The Stockings Were Hung..." cross-stitch picture I did years ago and one of my custom designed LED candles.
I decided this year to utilize two wall shelves I have in my family room for 9 of the mixed media decorations I had made this past summer for Christmas. Two of my mixed media snow fairies, the four Victorian mixed media bottles with paper flowers I had made, and the four mixed media large gingerbread house decorations I had made.
Pixie and Mixie are the snow fairies on the top shelf. Dixie is in the dining room.
In the middle shelf I decided to put the four mixed media Victorian bottles with the Christmas paper flowers I had made in them.
In the middle of the bottle I put the beautiful "Winter Roses" art doll made by Hally Levesque that I had won in the raffle from her Romantic Rosabella and Wee Winter Whimsies classes at Artful Gathering that I took.
Below the shelves I decided to hang the four large mixed media gingerbread houses I had made.
I love how all the mixed media decorations look on the shelves.
I decided to place the four mixed media houses I had made this summer over the door in my family room that leads to the sun-room. There is a winter village scene that was hand painted by an artisan that hubby and I had seen at a local craft show one year up there that stays there all year. So I tested to see if the mixed media houses I made would stay up there without falling down and bopping someone on the head. They wouldn't so I used double sided tape to keep them up there as it just seemed like the right place for them.
The large wood cabinet in the family room houses our television. We used to have an audio system on the shelves above the television but didn't replace the audio system when it failed this past year. It left us with several empty shelves so I decided to fill up the shelves with my Victorian Village Cross-Stitch shadowbox pictures. So, when the doors are open so we can watch television we get to see the Victorian cross-stitch pictures I had made that I placed in the shadowbox frames that my younger brother helped me make.
On the shelf above the Victorian shadowbox houses are a church, my Joy To The World cross-stitch picture I had made, and two red and green miniature glitter trees I had found at Michaels one year. The church was made by the artisan I mentioned above that made the toy shoppe and pizza parlor.
Shown in the picture above are one of my gingerbread-man custom designed pillows as well as my "Joy" pillow. There is a charming story regarding the "Joy" pillow that I wrote about in a previous Linda's Blog post entitled "I Have "Joy" Inside and Outside of My House."
I decided this past year to use my gingerbread-man design to create some adorable custom product designs for my Linda Walsh Originals Designs Gallery. I ended up creating all sorts of adorable gingerbread custom products for the holiday season like, Christmas stockings, place-mats (paper, cloth, and laminated), tablecloth, bathroom towels, kitchen towels, coasters, wrapping paper, Christmas cards, LED candles, ornaments, stickers, paper plates, napkins, pillows, tote bags, gift bags, wrapped canvas pictures and so much more. Shown above are some of the gingerbread place-mats that I put on my coffee table and end table in the family room.
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