Decking the Halls

My friend Judy Martin’s house in on the Tour of Homes in Marion this weekend.
I am on standby with some fake amaryllises in case the real ones don’t force in time. We are down to the wire. The florist is applying heat and light to make it happen.
Judy is one of those superwomen that have 20 things going at once. Any physical problems she might have are never mentioned. She just gives it her all and goes full speed ahead. Last year this time, she had major surgery with complications, was renovating her early 1800s house and still selling another house two counties away. This year, I guess she got bored with ordinary life (which for her is juggling four balls of activity on the air) and decided to add a little excitement by agreeing to host the tour.
Judy has her degree in interior design which has little to with her career life which includes working with two major universities, a non-profit foundation, and numerous volunteer jobs which she does so easily, that most people don’t realize the effort she puts in. Of course, the truth is that making a hard job look easy is a talent in itself. That is the same principal she is applying to the tour of homes. I’ve known women who can make a year long major production out of planning a wedding. It would take Judy one week and it would be a quality production.
She has chosen to make her décor theme how the house might have looked in its early days. She is using all natural greenery and fruits with a few feathers of local birds thrown in. Of course, like the early settlers, she will have some of the family pieces of silver and other collected treasures on display in her tablescapes.
Judy and her husband, John, did most of the renovation themselves with local subcontractors and carpenters. The house is not one of those grand Tara/Twelve Oaks jobs. It is one of the three oldest houses in an old Black Belt town. It has upper and lower porches and two front doors. The chicken coop in the backyard is on the National Register of Historic Places. Their renovation was kind to the old house. It was actually three houses cobbled together to make what is now their home. The den, the heart of the house was a sagging enclosed back porch. They jacked it up and made it look the way it was supposed to. They took two of the multitude of bedrooms and made great big baths that have places to lounge in them. The kitchen is state of the art with the prettiest yellow distressed cabinets you ever saw. The colors in the house are soft sagey greens and neutrals. The colors of the furnishings and draperies are muted, but not dull. You can imagine how the natural decorations will enhance the holiday theme.
Judy will probably kill me for divulging plan B which is having the fake flowers that will only be pressed into service if the real ones don’t rear their natural heads. I promise that these are good fakes. They came from the NDI (Natural Designs Incorporated) in Brewton which advertises in Southern Accents and Architectural Digest magazines which don’t allow any tacky in their pages. Besides, they’ll be interspersed with genuine raised in the woods greenery and berries from the back yard. If you don’t tell, I won’t.