Fun Times at the Christmas Open House

We were blessed with great weather Saturday for our Christmas Open House and it was lots of fun, as you can tell from these first photos.  Above, customer Amanda Cook took this great shot and shared it with me.

Here’s another shot of our Nike-shirt-wearing young customer, this time showing off the wild-bird treat he made.

Here’s the table where he made the treat, with instructions describing the following steps: 1. smear 1-2 tablespoons of peanut butter on the cut side of a bagel.  2. Press bagel, peanut-butter side down, into the pan of bird seed.  3.  String a strip of ribbon through the hole in the bagel and now it’s ready to be hung from a branch for the birds.  I made one myself and it’s working!

Another hands-on event at the Open House was the Paint-a-Poinsettia table, manned by our artist-in-residence Kate Taylor.

Kate uses alcohol-based spray paints that dry fast and don’t affect the plant at all, other than to change its color.

In addition to your choice of colors, fake snow could be applied, as Kate’s doing in the photo above.  Sparkles, too.

Lastly, here are some of my favorite items in the Christmas Shop.   I love that traditional, really home-spun-looking decorations are BACK.  Or maybe they never left?  Hope not.

These angels are so pretty, can we leave them out until spring?

I noticed lots of dog breeds to choose from and – ahem! – one for cats.  (Not that we cat people notice those things.)

The occasional non-traditional ornament is fine, especially if it’s a show of school spirit.  Go Terps!

Posted by Susan Harris.