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UPDATE: New Houses for Christmas!

2 months ago
last modified: last month

scroll to bottom of post for update!

For about 24 hours after the Recent Unpleasantness I did not even want to decorate for Christmas, but I decided that I was not going to let that be ruined and came up with a new decor direction. It started with my birthday…

I had a small collection of the little liqueur-filled Delft houses that are KLM perks given to first class passengers. I’d come by six or seven of my 15 houses on actual flights (to and from boarding school) and the rest I had purchased on EBay or Etsy when I saw one I particularly liked. They had been put away for years, until the NYT published a story about them last year that inspired me to dig them out. DH put together a spiral bound book of all the different houses by year and started looking for the special edition ones, THEN decided to get the entire set of 104 houses directly from KLM for my birthday. I knew nothing of this and was thrilled when a huge trunk arrived from the airport!

Of course I had to display them ALL and the only real solution was to use the English dresser in our living room (goodbye, plates!). DH ordered some finished 2 x 3”s to put on each shelf so we could have two rows of houses on each one.

When I started thinking sbout decorating for Christmas I seemed to see houses everywhere, so I decided to go with it. I used my original houses on the mantel with Chinoiserie trees, put two galvanized houses on the table and borrowed the house fireplace screen from my mother — I gave it to her 30 years ago and she uses it to go around the pedestal of her powder room sink. I have small white ceramic houses to go with the nativity scene and who knows what I will find next?

Here they are!


and with fairy lights they look like a real neighborhood!


My original ones on the mantel


(There are a few non KLM Delft ones mixed in)

The fireplace screen


(A note in the basket says ”white birch logs here” for Handy Guy who is coming Friday to decorate!)

And galvanized houses that light up on table (for some reason they look green).


The table will have a runner (my decade old WS red and white jacquard) and I haven’t yet gotten out the nativity, which this year moves to the open desk of a scrubbed pine secretary (Dutch, ironically). Tweaks are needed with all these displays but they’ll be party ready in a few days!

And this is how my birthday gift changed the look of our Christmas.❤️


UPDATE IN FEATURED AMSWER BELOW

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