I am sitting down after cleaning and straightening and just re-imagining our living room a wee bit. Yes, I do that a lot — often asking myself, ‘what if that bench was over there by the front door, and that chair moved over a foot to make a little more room for passage?’

It is a good thing my sweet husband pays attention, or he would surely bang his shin on the newly placed end table!

Generally, I believe that a good design should make you feel calm and accomplished.  When it’s right, it is right. But, once in a while, a light bulb goes off and I see an issue that I didn’t see before and then could improve upon ever so slightly.

This is when the moving starts. Nothing big, but a fresh take on placement. Continuous improvement, my hubby always says is in business. It is gratifying to fix something and ‘make it work’ as Tim Gunn often expresses.

What’s really churning around in my head is decorating the living room for Christmas. You see, this is the first holiday in our new place. We’ve only been here for one year. With a fabulous view and enormous windows, we’ve run into a bit of a dilemma — I don’t have any wall space for our TREE! Yikes!

We have lots of large art, three hallways coming off the living room, a fireplace, and did I mention the WALL of windows? Well, I have landed on a solution. I am going to put our tree on a wide demilune table next to the fireplace. It is brilliant!

The ceilings in our place are 9 1/2 feet tall, so with the thirty-two inch height on the table and the five foot tall Scandinavian Fir, our new little tree will TOWER over the room at 8 1/2 feet. Problem solved. Now what to do with the ornaments that we used on the ten foot tree at our last place? Ha!

It’s gonna be a very fancy little tree with every inch covered in something. Then I’ll do up the mantle, add loads of Maison Maison battery candles all over (even in sconces) and voila — a Christmas living room!

We are having our entire family here at our little nest in the sky and I can hardly wait. We have a bunch of great cooks in the family, so we all take turns and that lessens the stress on everyone. We are all sous chefs for each other and that is all part of the fun … hanging out in the kitchen, drinking wine, laughing, chatting, slicing and dicing, and just doing everyday tasks together.

Ahhhhhhh, we have so many family traditions when ALL our family gathers. One tradition is our ‘No-Talent Talent Show,’ where we each get up and do our best to surprise everyone with a hidden talent like a song or dance, an imitation of a famous person, or even a comedy skit.

Richard, Jesse and I, along with our Maison Maison family, hope you all have a warm, merry and soul-satisfying holiday with friends and family. Take a walk together, cook a little, bask in the love of family. There is truly nothing better.

With Love and Merriment,

Richard, Jane, Jesse, and the rest of our Maison Maison family (Elsa, Karen, Ami, Amy and Aidan).

P.S. Richard’s first Christmas gift to me as newlyweds was a tube of toothpaste and mine to him was guitar strings….it’s not about the stuff for grown ups, it’s all about the love!