It's August, the kids are back in school and it's time to start thinking about Christmas, right? Ahem, just getting around to posting this from last year...
I love to decorate with houses. They remind me of my Main Thing. I have 2 "house" quilts, miniature resin houses here and there, cross-stitched houses, patriotic houses in my Americana basement, and a ceramic Christmas Village painted over the course of a decade by me, my DH and my 2 DD's.
Problem #1: I lacked a way to hang stockings from my mantel without damaging the wood, so last year I decided I wanted "house" stocking holders and went online to find a do-able project or an affordable purchase. No luck.
Problem #2: My house has no place to set up a 17 piece Christmas Village.
The conjunction of these two problems at once led me to this solution: Make Stocking Holders out of our favorite Christmas Village Houses.
This project turned out to be one of my Best Ideas Ever, and this is how I did it: and I did it only with materials I had on hand. It was, at the time of construction, free to me. Yayah!
First I unpacked the Christmas Village.
There are about 17 pieces all created to make a Bedford Falls scene complete with
Martini's Place, Gower's Soda Fountain and Drug Store, The Emporium, The Movie House showing It's a Wonderful Life,
This one is 320 Sycamore.
If you don't know what these buildings refer to, google "Bedford Falls" and then spend a few hours in remedial Iconic American Culture school. No offense but, good grief, how in the world???
I asked my DH to whip up a base for the stocking holder custom fit to my mantel. It included knobs from which to hang the stockings. The knobs were salvaged from a previous furniture re-hab.
I decided to make things complicated so I asked DH to create space under the board for the lighting wires. We have a TV above our fireplace complete with an electrical outlet, so "rigging up the lights" is a definite go.
Meanwhile, I asked each family member to choose a building from the Village Set to have above their stocking. We ended up with the Church, the Railroad Station, the Library and 3 random houses. I laid them out on the board with a few accessories: sign, trees, footbridge, gazebo and lamp posts.
I marked with pencil the position of each building and each lamp post so DH could drill the holes for the wires.
Then, I glued the houses in place. We first used hot glue. It shook loose easily, so we brought out JB Weld which will hold the houses in place FOREVER.
I taped off the front of the board because it was stained and finished and I didn't want to paint over it. Then I painted the top of the board white...
...added textured snow, removed the tape and let it dry.
I was sure to put plenty of snow on which covered all my accidental messes with deliberate messes.
After it was dry, DH rigged up the lights. We lifted the board onto bar stools so he could work under it.
I used a broom handle to support the center due to the now substantial weight of the piece.
Then we set it in place on the mantel. This stocking holder was able to easily support 6 filled stockings with no chance of tipping over. I love the way it looks all lit up!
And even though it looks like it, it does not block the view of the TV and we can enjoy our traditional viewing of It's a Wonderful Life
I displayed the remaining Christmas Village houses on our bookshelves with LED votive candles underneath each one. This Christmas I will take and post a picture of them.
