Whether placed amongst baskets or sliding out of the entertainment center, there’s always a spot for a Dept. 56 house! By elevating houses on boxes and gracefully placing cotton batting, you can achieve the illusion of houses sliding out of a cabinet.

It is hard to imagine, but Christmas decorating can extend beyond Dept. 56. Who’d have thought! There are some interesting and lovely sights to behold around the house at the holidays.

Visitors are always surprised when they slide open the linen cupboard door to reach for a towel and instead find a lighted Dept. 56 display! No room is left untouched when it comes time to spreading holiday cheer through all parts of the house.

A hatbox is the perfect stage for a holiday fantasy. In our two versions, The Olde Globe Theatre and Shakespeare’s Birthplace steal the show. We filled a decorative holiday hatbox with empty accessory boxes and topped off with a cutout round of Styrofoam to use as a platform. To finish, we sprinkled some snow and wrapped an artificial berry garland around the perimeter.

The living room fireplace is home to Dept. 56′s Dickens’ Village. All but one house are part of the Signature Series.

The kitchen sink is a riot of holiday activity with Department 56′s 12 Days of Dickens’ Village series displayed on the window niche shelves. To add to the 12 Days theme, “Ten Lords Leap” and “Nine Ladies Dance” in the handcut paper garlands that hang above the sink area. These were made from Martha Stewart templates. The shelf decorations were made out of scrapbooking paper. We cut several sizes of trees and used a hole punch to make holes in the shelf papers.

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Placing houses in a wreath is a tedious task, but the results are worth it. Here, we’ve placed the original Dickens’ Village starter set houses in a large pine cone wreath. By carefully running the wires behind the wreath and up behind the streamer of ribbon, we were able to light the houses.

Sprawling your houses throughout the home creates holiday cheer in every nook and cranny. By clustering a small number of houses together, you can create an interesting display almost anywhere — on a dresser, in a basket collection, even on an air conditioner box as we’ve done with the Tower of London and Big Ben.

Mr. McFeely would never believe it, nor did we, for surely a gorgeous live Christmas tree via mail order could only happen in the Land of Make-Believe.

But alas, we ordered this 7′ Fraser fir from Mountain Star Farms and it was shipped via FedEx, arriving the day after it was cut.

This has been one of the easiest Christmas trees to put up and is far better than any artificial tree could ever be. We used our collection of old and antique glass ornaments, a light dash of tinsel and beeswax candles for a truely old-fashioned look. The freshness and beauty of this tree-spirit has made the holiday home come alive with the promise of Summer in the midst of Winter’s snow.

The 7′ tree arrived via overnight FedEx and was deposited at the back door. Clear instructions were listed on the box as was a guideline for where to cut the box open to access the trunk to make a new cut so the tree would take up water. We did this and then placed the tree immediately in water until we were ready several hours later to bring it inside.

The tree, still in its box, was placed in the bag-lined tree stand. A disposal bag was included in the section of the box that was cut away. The bag was placed between the tree and the stand so that after Christmas, the bag could simply but pulled up around the tree to prevent any needle mess and will later be covered with the tree skirt.

Once the tree was securely in the stand, a utility knife was used to slice the length of the box. The tree burst out of the box with little effort and the branches quickly fell into place. There was one lower limb that had been broken by boxing which we placed in the rear. After a day or so the tree is expected to resume its natural shape. The freshness is incredible. We have never had a real Christmas tree that was as crisp or fresh.

The tree, now decorated, is incredible and ready for holiday celebrating to begin. We used our collection of old and antique glass ornaments, a light dash of tinsel and beeswax candles for a truely old-fashioned look. This has been one of the easiest Christmas trees to put up and is far better than any artificial tree could ever be. The freshness and beauty of this tree-spirit has made the holiday home come alive with the promise of Summer in the midst of Winter’s snow.

The first time we saw Martha Stewart build a gingerbread house, we knew we wanted to make one just like she did. It was a huge Second Empire mansion, unlike any other gingerbread house. It was nearing Valentine’s Day and we decided to try our hand at our very first gingerbread house and cover it in pink royal icing. We created our own “blueprints” for the structure and located Martha’s gingerbread recipe on the Internet and went to work. The sugar for the windows had crystallized instead of caramelizing which was quite frustrating, but serendipitously ended up looking like “frosted” window panes, which was perfect. The finished house was nearly 30″ tall!The following year we bought Martha’s gingerbread house kit and with some creative embellishment made our second house.The third house is almost exactly like the original Martha made, complete with copper-leafed roof. We went a step further and frosted the sides with sanding sugar.