Pineapple House | Christmas Tour 2020

As I do each year, I am inviting you into Pineapple House today for a look around. We have certainly not had many house guests during this strange year of Covid-19, so I am glad that I am able to invite you here online. You'll just have to take my word that the house smells like pine (thanks to a pine candle), the coffee is on, and there are a few treats to choose from while you visit. Let's turn on some music, shall we? We have listened to this album a lot this December!   ~ click here for music ~

From the back door, you will come into our kitchen. 

You can read all about our kitchen remodel ~ here ~ ,
but if you're just here for the Christmas house tour, have a look around!

This corn husk nativity is one of our oldest Christmas decorations, older than a couple of our children! 

I love its rustic charm.

The island holds the beginnings of my newest collection: stone fruit.

These hand-carved trees were made by my 10-year-old grandson Peter!

Now we're talking! We've made it to the coffee station.

Bring your coffee into the dining room. You can sit and sip at the table as you look around.

You can read about the sideboard that Ron made ~ here ~.

We still love our stepback cupboard and I looked forward to decorating it for Christmas again this year.

You may remember me talking about this pesky wall? 

Well, after five tries, I think we're finally happy with it! (I'll be sharing more about that in January.)

I cannot wait until we're able to gather and sing around the piano again!

If you've finished your coffee -- or even if you haven't -- come on into the living room and find a comfy chair.

Yes, we switched to a tabletop tree this year and I'm not sorry about it!

The stockings are new too. (Finally.)

I treasure the olive wood nativity that our son Ryan brought us from a trip to Israel.

Now I'll stop talking and let you wonder around a bit. 

Thank you, friends, for joining me at Pineapple House today! 

I don't know about you, but our Christmas plans have changed multiple times, even this week. Who knows what each day will bring? And that is one lesson that keeps coming home to me during the past nine months: the fact that we must hold our plans loosely. Of course, that has always been the case. Life is uncertain and we are not, and never have been, in control. The events of this year have simply illuminated that fact! But the beauty in that lesson is that our loving Lord is, and always has been, in total control. There is nothing that has caught Him by surprise, and nothing that He will not use for the good of those who are His. That brings me great comfort. 

He is trustworthy. 

He is Immanuel. "God with us."

Merry Christmas to you and yours as you celebrate Immanuel! 

{All of my Christmas house tours can be found ~ here ~.}

Christmas Mantel | New Stockings

 

This year, as always, I created a Della Robbia style mantel. This one has greens, fruits, pine cones, seed pods, and berries. 

But this year's mantel has a new addition . . . actually three additions because I finally got around to making new Christmas stockings! 

I have planned to make stockings for years. The first year we moved to Pineapple House, I bought a coverlet style throw for the material to make them. But that Christmas came and went with no new stockings made. Since then, the throw has actually been used as a throw and it was used as a tree skirt a couple of times, but it was not used for Christmas stockings.

But this fall, on one of my antiquing forays with Barbara, I found a green coverlet patterned stocking! Finding it was the impetus I needed. I purchased it and used it as a pattern to make two more from the red throw.  

(I had a little "help.")

So on our fifth Christmas here at Pineapple House, we finally have Christmas stockings to hang on the mantel! 

You know how misery loves company. 😉 Do I have any fellow procrastinators out there? Are there Christmas projects that you intend to do year after year? How have you found the impetus to start and/or finish them? 

A New Tradition | Our Tabletop Christmas Tree

 

I have had the idea of a tabletop tree in the back of my mind ever since I saw this inspiration photo many years ago. (You may remember me talking about it last year.)

Country Living magazine ~ December 2008

My thought was that we would down-size our tree after our last child left the nest. Until then we'd continue to put up the full-size tree with our family ornaments and the children's own personal collection. (We have given each child an ornament every year, and as they leave the nest, they take their ornament collection to their own homes.)

But, my last child at home (19-year-old Bekah) loves house-y things as much as I do, and she said, "You don't have to wait for me! Go for it!" 

So we did! 

It was the year to make a change.

This was the year that my mom gave me this Shaker style table, a beautiful piece that has been in our family for generations.  It seemed the perfect place to set the tree, in front of our big picture window. 

I had bought some faux cranberry garland last year at a local country store. Once upon a time (literally once) I strung cranberries to make my own garland, but it took for. ev. er. and the berries shrank on the string. Of course, they wouldn't keep from year to year and I couldn't see myself taking that much time every year so I gave up on that idea. I have had some red bead garland in the past, but I decided that I wanted some more realistic faux cranberries for my future tabletop tree (and then the "future" became this year!), so we went out after Christmas last year and found these. 

I have had the popcorn garland for probably thirty-five years! (You may remember seeing it on the kitchen tree at The Farmhouse.)

I dried some oranges to hang . . . 

. . . and tied strings on these pomanders.

~ Christmas 2019 ~

At Bekah's suggestion, we put our new tree in an old crown crock. Ron rigged up something to hold it steady . . . a big block of wood (corners trimmed to fit into the round container) with a hole drilled in the center (not too big or it won't sit straight, but not too small or the "trunk" won't go in). It's great to live with a handyman who finds solutions to our decor dilemmas! 

And there we have it! 

I may add some gingerbread cookies (or I may not). I may add some clip on candles (but I haven't even ordered them yet). Our punched tin star topper was too big for this tree and I haven't found another that I like. 

But the most likely scenario is that the tree is finished for this year. It will look even better when there are some more packages on the table and under it! 

Are we officially "old" now that we have a tabletop tree? Maybe so, but we are quite happy with our little tree!