RE-decorating: Christmas Home Tour

FRONT DOOR:  The asymmetrical original front door to Reba's Monterey style Colonial home with a red Christmas wreath and a garland decorated with red ribbon and ornaments. Several years ago, Reba and her husband bought and renovated his grandmother's home, a designated historic house.  All Reba's Christmas decor is traditional in accordance with the home's style.

FULL VIEW FRONT DOOR ON PORCH:  Reba kept all the original hardware to the front door and kept the original white and green color scheme her husband's grandmother maintained for the exterior.  The wood front door is painted a dark green and her porch floor has terracotta tiles. She has wrapped her front planters with red ribbon and filled them with poinsettias.  Poinsettias are very popular during the holidays where our family is from  in South Texas.  You may have noticed our sister, Elsa,  has poinsettias in front of her fireplace in our blog entry on her Christmas decor.  Poinsettias are Mexican plants also known as "Noche Buena",  Christmas Eve in Spanish.  They are as Christmas-y as Santa in our area.  Both of my sisters chose to use red ones this year. I usually use the newer white ones for my own house  in Austin.

RAILING ON BACK PATIO: Reba likes to wrap her outdoor railings in garland and red bows for the holidays. Very simple and traditional. Those are palm trees and other tropical plants beside the steps off the back patio. The funny part of Christmas in South Texas is that it can sometimes be warm enough for shorts on Christmas day.

LIVING ROOM: Another traditional Christmas look.  Reba's Christmas tree in her living room has a deep red color velvet skirt with gold trim. The tree is decorated with red and gold ribbon and her collection of glass angel ornaments.   She places her tree in the corner of her living room in front of a display of Santos.   She moves some of her Santos to her mantel and pulls her husband's collection of small bronze dog sculptures off the mantel for the holidays.

A close up of one of Reba's glass angel ornaments. 

FAMILY ROOM: Reba's family room Christmas tree is monochromatic gold with gold ribbon and gold angel ornaments. It has a regal color theme with a deep purple velvet skirt with gold embroidery and gold trim.

Close up of Reba's gold ornaments on her family room tree.

LIBRARY: For the holidays, Reba drapes garland around her paintings.  She has added a folk Nativity set to the table top display of religious art pieces she normally has.

A close up shot of one of Reba's folk art angels. As I mentioned in the entry on my own Christmas mantel, collecting religious art pieces is very convenient during holidays because they can be easily incorporated into holiday decor.  This is especially true during Christmas and Valentine's Day.  Just use a little metallic or velvet ribbon and greenery around them, add a candle and they quickly make a dramatic and romantic setting.  LOVE them so much.

She has a white, crystal and silver tree she adds to the mix sometimes, too, but generally Reba repeats her Christmas decor year after year.  Yeah, she doesn't get to join in on the trends much, but sticking to traditional looks is easier on one's schedule and like so many, Reba is especially busy during December. Our mother is not exactly domestic, (an understatement), and my parents are now older, so Reba has to not only set up her house for Christmas, she usually has to help set up our mother's house as well which usually entails plenty of errands. Neither of my parents like to shop either so Reba usually gets stuck doing their holiday shopping for them and our father's birthday and our parent's anniversary are both in December.

A place setting from our father's birthday party last week.  Metallic red chargers from WalMart & Spode Christmas china sit on top of a matching Spode tablecloth.  We use matching Spode stemmed glasses. This is our family Christmas ware. Sometimes, Reba uses red glass goblets with it at her house, but for the family, we keep it what my dad likes to teasingly call "matchy- matchy."  For the party, Reba put out Christmas crackers and set out small red boxes filled with chocolates tagged with holiday gift cards inscribed with guests names to be place cards.

The handsome man with the glasses and the guayabera shirt is our father. He turned 81.  Our niece and nephews are on his right and our sister, Elsa, is on his left.  (Daddy's girl deluxe.)  The enormous chocolate birthday cake came from a local bakery. So SO good.  December is brutal on diets, every single year.  

Reba promised to send more pictures later, but that's it for now.  Doing this blog has made me realize that our style while traditional, is still greatly influenced by our region.  Hope you enjoy seeing this South Texas spin on traditional American Christmas decor.  If you did, we would love a comment or two. We are new bloggers and we've just gotten our first comments this week and each one has been very exciting and encouraging to us.  Thanks for visiting, y'all.

Written by Eldarose

P.S. I am having trouble posting replies to the comments, but I will change computers tonight to post some. THANK YOU for your  encouraging feedback. All the comments are very special to us especially since we are so new at blogging. 

RE-decorating: 3 Kings Mantel & a great tree

For some of you, this mantel may look unlike one you've ever seen before.  If so, I hope you will like it as much as I do.  My sister, Elsa, was kind enough to share some of her Christmas decorating this year with us for the blog.  Reba took photos of Elsa's tree and her mantel. As seen above,  Elsa displays the 3 Kings on her mantel. Oddly, I had forgotten this and before I had seen the pictures, I had mentioned to my husband recently that I really wanted to find 3 Kings to display on our mantel in our new home.  I was thinking about something with them in gold, sitting on camels with a star of some kind placed above them as in the Bible story or maybe as wooden silhouettes with a candle in front of them so their shadow is cast on the wall above the mantel? Elsa's Kings are figurines covered in sheer fabric lined with gold riff raff.  They are very formal and I think she's had them for awhile now.  Personally, I really like it when Christmas decorations reference the Christmas birth story.  To me, there is nothing more moving or dramatic in Christmas decor than something that can remind others of the amazing miracle of Christ's birth.   My family is Hispanic and Christian and for us, the 3 Kings are an important part of  the Christmas season.  Although Christmas Day itself is the big day for us, if you are from a Hispanic or Catholic culture, the day the Kings arrived, "El Dia de los Tres Reyes Magos" or "El Dia de los Reyes" feels like the end of Christmas. It is celebrated on the church celebration of The Epiphany around January 6th, which is the church's end of the Feast of Christmas.  For us and many other Hispanics, Epiphany is when the Christmas tree is taken down. That's right, we get to keep our tree up GUILT FREE until January 6th!

The 3 Kings have names.  The one with the darkest skin is Baltasar. I have always heard he brings the best gifts. FYI, for Mexican kids, much like Santa Claus, the 3 Kings may bring them gifts on The Epiphany as they did for the baby Jesus.   Since my family didn't do gift-giving as part of The Day of the Three Kings, I don't know if Baltasar brings the best gifts first hand.  LOL. The other two Kings are Gaspar and Melchor.   As seen here, the Kings almost always have gifts in their hands.  The Arrival of the 3 Kings is also often celebrated with a sweet cake/bread called "Rosca de Reyes" which is ring shaped and has a baby Jesus in it.  Whoever gets the piece with the Baby Jesus in it usually has to host the celebration the next year.  The up side is that it is also seen as a lucky sign that Jesus is especially blessing the person who receives the baby figurine.   My parents usually get a Rosca de Reyes cake as a gift from a friend or neighbor.  Much like Tamales, they are popular gifts for Christmas time in my hometown and very tasty. 

Another view of the mantel.

If you're curious, this is a good example of what the Rosca de Reyes might look like. It is ring shaped. Sometimes people decorate the center with fruit, a crown or tinsel. The designs and recipes are as varied as Christmas wreaths really.  The only thing consistent is the shape. However, they are usually distinguishable from King Cakes made for Mardi Gras because they do not generally feature the liturgical colors of purple, green & gold the way those cakes usually do.  Food.com seems to have a pretty good recipe for a Rosca de Reyes. If you want one, you can find it HERE,

Elsa puts up a nativity set of the Holy Family on her piano with a Spanish shawl underneath as part of her living room display.  The Holy Family set was made by the same people who made her 3 Kings set.  She also puts up a large nativity set our mother gave her on the coffee table of her family room.   My sisters and I all really like nativity sets for Christmas decor.

Elsa called me to say she was thrilled with the tree her husband found her this year and after seeing the pictures I can see why.  It is a beautifully shaped, healthy tall tree.  It can be so hard to find a good natural tree sometimes and then so often they cost a fortune.  Elsa got really lucky this year. The tree is gorgeous and her ceilings are very tall so it is really great that the tree works with the scale of her room.   She bought more ribbon this year to add fullness to the tree decoration.  She ended up using 3 different types of ribbon, red, gold and red & gold.  And she needed really long rolls so they would do one side of the tree without any pasting/piecing together. She said a friend suggested Sam's Club and sure enough they had a great supply there of long ribbon that was much less expensive than Hobby Lobby, Michael's, Garden Ridge, Target, small paper invitation shops or any of the other places I recommended she search.  I think it is a beautiful tree and when I get to see it in person, I will probably supplement this entry with some close up shots because it so deserves more pictures. Hope you enjoyed it. 

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