Christmas Open House - December 4, 2010

Saturday was a wonderful day for Lee and me as we welcomed around 100 guests into our home for a Christmas Open House to celebrate the Christmas season and the fact that our home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We have worked hard over the past few weeks to get our home ready and we have to admit, we thought it was a success! Many, many, many thanks go to our wonderful friend and former Jacksonian neighbor Mike Millson (his garden blog here) who devoted a lot of his time and resources in helping us decorate for the season. We could not even have attempted this if it wasn't for his help, guidance, creative thinking, and his decorations (on loan) that he gave to us! Putting lights on a tree, giving food tips, arranging beautiful flowers, and decorating 3 beautiful trees...this man can do it all!

Many, many other thanks go to our families who helped in loaning us decorations, cleaning the house, keeping Ella, taking care of things the night of the event or just being there to keep us (mostly me & the baby inside) calm during all of this! Thanks to our good friends Jocelyn and Eric who were there the whole night to take care of anything (changing records, chasing Ella around, washing dishes afterward, etc)...we greatly appreciate you and your friendship! And a big thanks to friend Holly Nichols for staying the whole night to take pictures. She had many great shots...unfortunately, the lighting was pretty hard to adapt to (imagine 1600 lights on just one of our trees), but she helped us to capture memories from the night.

We had a great turnout of many people who may live around the house now or when they were younger...some even grew up playing in this house. It was great to hear memories of the house or of Lee's family from others that we have never even met. We were so glad that these people came to introduce themselves to us!

Finally...to the pictures! There are soooo many (almost 300 maybe) that I have tried to go through and pick out which ones would be blog worthy. Since I have had so much trouble deciding...you are just going to get the full gamut!

We were so busy the whole night that these are the only ones we got of the three of us...

Living Room

(including 10 foot real tree that was perfect...in my mind, at least)

Library

(including 9 foot artificial tree, lots of food, and vintage Christmas vinyl records that played)

Dining Room

(including 3 dozen red roses in centerpiece)

Den

(including family ornament tree with the movie White Christmas playing on TV)

Master Bedroom

(including a beautiful fresh floral arrangement by Mike and Lee's favorite...a vintage aluminum tree with a color wheel)

In Master bathroom...

Sunroom (Breakfast Room/Office)

(includes old family Christmas pictures on tree with popcorn garland...yes, I actually used a needle and thread and did that...talk about frustrating! Also included lots of good food and Strawberry wine from our local winery)

 

Hallway and Guest Bath

 

Stairwell

(including real cedar branches going up banister, clippings from paper where our house was featured, and an old advertisement for "Bubba Strawberries" from Lee's Family's Business.  Bubba was his grandfather.)

Kitchen

(not much going on here except for food prep and clean-up)

Ella's Room

(her room had one little tree)

Virginia's Room

(had a fresh flower bouquet...more on her room to come later)

Upstairs Hallway

(includes "The Girls' Tree" as we have referred to it...my favorite one of all)

Porch and Front Door

(includes candles to surround porch railings)

That about covers all of the decorations in the house. I have over 100 pictures left of just candids and of all of the guests that attended. Those may have to go in a facebook album!! Thanks again to everyone for your help and/or well wishes! It was a great weekend!!