It's 12 Days of Christmas at That Old House!

We are die hards.

We celebrate Christmas for its full 12 days, from the 25th to Epiphany on January 6th. Our Christmas decor doesn't get tucked away until then; perhaps this is because the church I grew up in was called "Epiphany," and that holiday was a big deal for us Sunday School kids.

Notice the "Quote-a-saurus" at the right; it is a wooden dinosaur built and painted by Annie for her
Philosophy PhD student sister Alida, as a Christmas gift. He's covered with quotes, wears a mortarboard, and an academic stole. He has joined the Wise Men, ready for Epiphany. After all, aren't philosophers always searching for epiphanies?

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Leaving our decorations up till Epiphany means our fresh greens shed a bit, our Frasier fir begins to bend and droop and drop its ornaments, and the Santas and Snowmen collect that fine protective coating of dust that covers so much of the things at That Old House.

Today, three days past the 25th, I changed a few things about our parlor mantelpiece decor.

It started out simple, on the 19th of December -- fresh cedar roping, a few plain glass hurricanes with thick red candles, and a glittery red mesh ribbon, wound through the greenery by my designer daughter Anne:

"How about some nice big shiny red glass balls?" asked I.
"No," said Anne. "There's enough bling with the ribbon. Leave it alone."
"But . . . ."
"Mom, no. Leave it. It's enough."

Oh honey, I thought to myself, you are so young. It is never enough.

I was good; I left it alone for our big Christmas party on the 20th, and beyond.
But today, Anne is out at the mall, and I have the run of the house.
Into the parlor I sneaked. . . .

And I added three big vintage-style glass balls, and a wild shiny sequin-ed red reindeer,

that my husband found yesterday on the sale table at T.J. Maxx.

Christmas is a time for indulgence and over-the-top-ness.

And speaking of indulgence, I have another metamorphosis to share,
this one involving Mr. Dion DiPoochy, our Cavalier King Charles Spaniel.

Daughter Alida had a canister of Poppycock, that nut-and-caramel popcorn snack that is crazy delicious and uber-sweet and sticky. She left it, half eaten but tightly closed, on a high table. We found it the other morning . . . . on the floor.

Note the teeth marks. And the emptiness. Presto-change-o! All gone!
Our darling doggy transformed thousands of calories of
Poppycock into -- well, you fill in the blank.

As for our thief, he looked a little droopy:

Rather like that old TV commercial:
"I can't believe I ate the whole thing."

It was too much effort to stay awake:

Or even move.

No other ill effects! He was a little put out that his normal meals were half their size for a day and a half. He never connected it with the extra 2000 calories he'd consumed in Poppycock.

Two days earlier, he ate 7 pieces of thick gingerbread coated in chocolate that Anne had bought at a Christmas mart in NYC. $8 worth of gingerbread, down the hatch. Luckily for Dion, since he's eaten more than his share in his time, he is not sensitive to chocolate.

So, from our parlor to yours, we wish you a very happy and contented rest of the Christmas holiday,
as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, and the visit of the Magi to the stable in Bethlehem.

I'll try and wind down the Christmas posts as the days go by, but we're still in celebratory mode. I tried to get a picture of That Old House at night, outside, with its Christmas trees shining through the windows, and ended up with a rather ghostly look:


That's the fresh tree in
the sunroom on the right,
but you can't see the
girls' tree in the study windows
or the faux tree in the parlor
all the way to the left of the
house.

But you can see our chimney
pumping out way too much
vapor. Guess what? We need a new steam boiler! Oy.





Thanks to Susan at Between Naps On The Porch

for hosting Metamorphosis Monday!

Visit here.





Thanks to Cielo, of The House In The Roses,

for hosting Show Off Your Cottage Monday!

Visit here!




Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, and a blessed Epiphany to all! -- Cass