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Community Corner

Getting Ready For The Holiday Season

A local holiday homes tour presents "Entertaining with Style"

While Halloween got an extra week on the calendar this year and winter weather popped in for an early visit, it is now officially that time of year to start thinking about entertaining family and friends in our homes for the upcoming holiday season.

Always on the lookout for fresh entertaining ideas, I recently visited a "Holiday Homes Tour" hosted by the Boxford Elementary Schools Trust that showcased eleven distiguished homes decorated with holiday entertaining in mind.

Participating designers, retailers, florists and artists from the North Shore transformed rooms into festive spaces that celebrated autumn decorating, Thanksgiving dining, Christmas and New Year's themes. Also on hand, were builders and landscape designers who had a role in creating the lovely homes on the tour.

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I had the pleasure of taking in the tour with one of the designers, Laura Thomson of Lynnfield. Laura's space was the only outdoor room on the tour and it was beyond charming! It began with a galvanized bucket filled with water and apples for bobbing outside the entrance to a secret garden room hidden under a magnificent Weeping Hemlock Tree. Under the tree's large canopy, a colorful child's table with four chairs was set with kraft paper, cut apples, paints and a large jar of candy corn. Spiced donuts hung on string wrapped around the low limbs of the tree. "I love the challenge of incorporating as much detail as humanly possible into my designs," Laura explains. 

The theme of Laura's design was based on a family tradition of pressing cider. She brought her family apple press and set up a station on the home's expansive front lawn. Up on the veranda style porch, she set the scene for an after party that included rustic touches, floral artistry and sophisticated table settings. A painting done by her son Richard in high school - who is now attending college - hung over a very chic apple martini station. Burlap table cloths served as an organic contrast to sparkling vintage red glassware filled with fresh flowers on a table adorned with fruits and moss. A twig chandelier above the table added a whimsical touch and a trio of orange lanterns on the steps provided a punch of color.

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Other homes on the tour, which was well attended by hundreds of visitors, opened up to reveal holiday entertaining as if it were late December, not the first weekend in November. While some tables were set with seashore inspired themes in reds and blues, others were traditional reds and whites or metallic silvers and golds. Some homes went all out in trying to recreate an authentic holiday atmosphere by having holiday music in the background and turkeys roasting in their ovens, which was not entirely fair to those of us who had to go home with that aroma still fresh in our memories! Even so, the tour was certainly inspiring. Plus it is always fun to peek inside people's homes to see how they decorate for the holidays.

To read more about the show, visit Laura Thomson's design blog: Designing44

And for some bonus photos, visit my blog: Design Vignettes

 

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