The Sherlock Holmes Tree

For the first time in 25 years I’ve put up my Sherlock Holmes tree. When I was married to my first husband, we had a large house with a guest room that was done in a Sherlock Holmes theme. Among the things in that room was my miniature re-creation of Holmes’s sitting room at 221B Baker Street, on top of which, every December, I would erect a small tree, and cover it with Sherlock Holmes theme ornaments.

I always enjoyed that tree, and was amazed at how many Sherlock Holmes ornaments I had. When the word got out that I liked Sherlock, people would make me, or scour the earth for, Sherlock Holmes ornaments to add. So, this tree has a lot of history to it.

 It felt so good to put it up this year. The house I lived in with Mr. O-P was too small to have a place for it. So, for the time we spent at that house, the ornaments, and my miniature Baker Street were stored away. It did good things to my soul to get everything out this year. And, as long as I am in an upright position, that Sherlock Holmes tree is going to go up every year.

In fact, I already have plans to make some ornaments of my own to add to the tree next year, and share with others of like mind.

The Sherlock Holmes ornaments are easy to recognize, although some ornaments may not make obvious sense to those who don't know the Sherlock Holmes stories well.

The red bicycle, for example, is to represent The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist.

The goose represents the lone Christmas story in the canon The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.

The old man (who is really Ebenezer Scrooge), reminded me so much of Sherlock playing the old bookseller in The Adventure of the Empty House, that I had to take it off of my Dickens tree and put him on my Sherlock tree. I like him here.

I don't as yet have a hound of the Baskervilles, but I do have a pipe (though not a calabash), and I need to add a Persian slipper. This tree is going to grow in years to come, not in size but in volume.

 For those of you who are as passionate about things as I am about Sherlock, you might consider having your own themed tree. They’re a lot of fun to put together, and always draw lots of comments and interest from family and friends.

This post is linked to:

Cooking & Crafting with J&J

Amaze Me Monday

Busy Mondays

Celebrate Your Story

Weekend Inspiration Party
Share Your Style

Simple Saturday Blog Hop

A Bouquet of Talent

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What Does your Christmas Tree Say about You?

It's time to put up the Christmas tree again and, is it just me, or did those months roll around really quickly? It seems like only yesterday that I was planting seeds and waiting with great anticipation to see them sprout. 

As I was getting out the ornaments and other holiday tree embellishments, I was struck by how much the decorated tree has become such a representation of my life and interests. This made me wonder just what trees say about the people who decorate them.

Family is very important to me.

 I am a lover of travel.

I'm a reader of mysteries and avid fan of Sherlock Holmes.

I'm a bit of an Anglophile.
A fan of mail art and decorative stamps, I also like Charles Dickens and “A Christmas Carol.”

I love music, used to be a brass player, and majored in music for a while.

I love the pomp and circumstance surrounding the English hunt.

A new addition last year, I had to pay homage to “Downton Abbey.”

The next time you are decorating your tree, stand back and take a good look. What does your tree say about you? Let me know in a comment below.

  

This post is linked to:

Great Idea Thursday

Create It Thursday

Think and Make Thursday
Home and Garden Thursday

Thursday Favorite Things

Simple and Sweet Fridays

Foodie Friday & Everything Else

Fridays Flash Blog

Friday Frenzy

O Tannenbaum

 Once the bathroom was decorated I was on my way. I'll be entertaining on dual levels this year, which can make things a bit of a challenge, but for the most part, most of the action will be here in the great room. Thank goodness the tree is now up. This picture below made me laugh. It's a terrible picture, I know, this dreary weather makes photography a bit of a challenge, but what makes this photo so funny is that I accidentally captured the image on the television. Look at the poor guy on the floor. That is exactly how I feel!

The tree skirt made me a bit teary this morning. It was made by my mother back in the seventies when she, my aunt, and I were having our holiday bazaars. 

It still looks as bright and beautiful as it did then, and my mother (woman of the tiny stitches), sewed everything by hand. 

The ornaments on the tree are a mishmash of things that reflect my life over the years. 

Our travels. 

 The kids. 

My lifelong interest in mysteries and Sherlock Holmes. 

 My love of Charles Dickens, 19th century Britain and all things English. 

There are a lot of ornaments on this tree representing "A Christmas Carol," all of which are special because I loved the book, and my number two son played Scrooge in a high school presentation for which he won an award.

 The little houses perch on tree lights to give them illumination. 

I have even framed some British postcards that are enlargements of a series of stamps that bear images of scenes from the book.

This post is linked to: 

Seasonal Sundays

Metamorphosis Monday

Oh, Christmas Tree

My mother made me this ornament the year my first child was born.  It is her own design and sewn entirely by hand.

For the past 16 years my husband and I have occupied our Century Home, now boasting age 119.  Each of those 16 years, every spring, like clockwork, the organizer of the Summer Century Home Tour has appeared on our doorstep asking if we'd like to put our house on tour.  Every year our answer has always been the same.  No.  The thought of readying our half-acre yard that by mid-summer bursts with herbs, vegetables, and colorful blossoms, but looks rather bleak in June, not to mention cleaning and sprucing up the interior after a rather slothful winter seemed daunting.  "Ask us for the holiday tour," I'd call after her as she dejectedly descended our front steps.  My reasoning was that this would only require a cleaning of the interior, the placement of our holiday decorations, and that would be that.

So, the day after Thanksgiving, when my husband and I were delirious from exhaustion, the organizer of the Holiday Historical House Tour showed up at our door asking us if we'd like to participate.  Before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth I'd said "yes."  We had a little over two weeks to prepare.  Initially this sounded like a lot of time.  It wasn't.  Cleaning and decorating takes time.  Lots of time.  Finding the decorations takes even more time.  If not for my son who gave up his day off and another free afternoon to the cause, we'd never have made it.

As a consequence, I did no cooking.  We ate out, or scrounged in the freezer, sometimes warming the food, other times just popping it out of its container and licking it like a beef-flavored Popsicle.  I'll be back later in the week with recipes, and tomorrow with my table setting, but for today I'd thought you might enjoy seeing some the ornaments that grace our tree.

When my boys were small Christmas was always dazzling.  I went to great lengths to transform the house into a holiday wonderland.  Each of our nine rooms had its own tree, each with a different theme.  Life and age has since caught up with me, so now each  tree is represented on the main tree in the living room.  This ornament featuring Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim was a part of the "Christmas Carol" tree, full of Dickens ornaments. Interestingly enough my youngest son gave an award-winning performance of Scrooge in his High School play.  I like to think this tree helped influence him.

I doubt there are many trees in the city of St. Louis that don't feature some form of Cardinal to pay homage to their favorite team. The sheet music behind represents our extensive musical background.

I collect an ornament from every place we visit.  This one of the St. Augustine Lighthouse is a pleasant reminder of a fun trip with friends.

This lovely ornament was a gift from my friend, Marilyn.  She rubber-stamped the top piece, cut it out and affixed it to a glass ball filled with a crystal snow-like substance.  She mailed it to me in a small Christmas tin filled with red and green excelsior.  The tin was NOT in a box, just taped shut and a label and postage attached directly to the tin.  It's always fun getting mail from Marilyn!

A lifelong lover of mysteries, this is but one of about two dozen ornaments that used to adorn the Sherlock tree in the Sherlock theme guest room.
 

Thanks for your visit.  What ornaments will grace your tree this year?
"I am sharing my holiday home decor for the chance to win prizes from The SITS Girls and Great Cleaners."

This post is linked to:Seasonal Sunday

Stained Glass Ornament Cookies

It's holiday baking time!  One of my favorite, but most frantic times of the year.  I think I enjoy the cookbook perusing, planning, ingredient buying, and envisioning huge, beautiful platters of cookies, much more than I enjoy the reality of all of the hard work, shaping, forming, slicing, and baking.  But, oh the wonderful aromas, personal satisfaction, and of course, soaking up all of those accolades, not to mention gobbling tasty cookies!  I suppose it really does make all of the work worthwhile.

One thing I have learned over the years is to tackle the most difficult or time-consuming cookies first.  As the holiday season comes barreling towards us at breakneck speed, it often becomes wise to opt for the simple rather than complex when our backs are against the wall, so if I plan on doing any type of special cookie, I make them first.

These Stained Glass Ornament Cookies are both delicious and attractive.  I used my own gingerbread cookie recipe and a set of ornament cookie cutters that I bought from Williams-Sonoma. (If you don't have a favorite gingerbread cookie recipe, you can find mine here.)  I was intrigued by the cutters and having never made a stained glass window cookie thought they might aid in my endeavor.  Actually, you can really do this on your own with any type of large cutter and any type of small one.  Roll out chilled dough to about 3/8", cut with the larger cutter, cut out little "windows" with the smaller cutter, and fill each window with crushed hard candies.  I used Jolly Ranchers because I liked the jewel-tone colors.  It took a bit of practice to get the amount right, and I have no idea how to guide you here except to encourage you to experiment.  If you use too little, the windows will have holes in them, use too much and the melted candies run over.  To avoid a potential mess, be sure to employ the use of parchment paper when you bake these.

Ready for the oven. Crushed Jolly Rancher candies seemed to give the biggest assortment of colors to fill in the little windows on the cookies.

Out of the oven, my crushed candies cooperated nicely leaving me with wonderful little jewel-toned windows in the ornament cookies. Now to decorate and hang on the tree.

Considering that I am really not a cookie decorator, I'm pretty pleased with the way they turned out.  They are much prettier than they photograph.  When the little tree lights shine through the "stained glass" section of the cookie, it positively glows!

This post is linked to:

Seasonal Sunday, Mouthwatering Monday, Totally Tasty Tuesdays, Tasty Tuesday,  What's Cooking Wednesday, Cupcake Apothecary and Sunday's Best

Ornamentally, my dear Watson!

That is the answer to the question I posed to myself today when wondering aloud how I was going to decorate the mantle.  It's an annual adventure since I seldom remember what I do from year to year.

I had no clue what I was doing, just started digging around in the basement looking for BIG things to put on it and ended up using the giant ornaments that I ran down the center of the dining room table last year. I like to do something different with table every year, so the ornaments are now classified as free-range decorating items.  I also made a big score at Michael's over the weekend by nabbing a lot of their floral and greenery items at 50% off.  Largely I bought them with package decorating in mind (more about that later in the week), but ended up using about a third of it on the mantle.  I plan on decorating BOLDLY, but sparingly this year; with the house on the market, this is a must.  I don't have time for extensive set-up or tear-down or dusting so many small things, so by using fewer, but larger ones, I'll get a big punch of holiday cheer without having to knock myself out.  Is it possible that I'll enjoy them this year?  Here's hoping!

These big ornaments are from Sam's and were purchased last year by my husband!  I knew what I wanted to use to decorate the dining room table, so just told him to find me some BIG cranberry and gold ornaments.  He did!  I was gobsmacked.  And I liked them!  (Ditto.)  They're actually for outdoor use and are shatterproof, so both pretty and durable.  And who knows, since I do something different every year, one day they may end up outside.

The two large poinsettias were purchased with the intention of using them to decorate large holiday packages, but I really liked the way they looked here.

The small poinsettias, cranberry, and gold berries (also from Michael's and purchased with package-wrapping intent) added some life to the lighted greenery (and yes, it is lighted and was illuminated when this picture was taken).

Apparently I collect brass candlesticks.  I didn't realize it until I counted up nine of them.  Most of them are by Virginia Metalcrafters.  I love them all.

 
 

After decorating the mantle I whipped up a batch of DELICIOUS mocha fudge sauce.  We had it over generous scoops of peppermint ice cream for dessert after dinner (and when I say dinner I mean sloppy joes consumed during the Rams game).  It was so good I could have eaten it as a side dish.  Watch for the recipe later this week.

This is linked to Metamorphosis Monday, Seasonal Sundays and The Holiday Home Linky Party at The Lettered Cottage.