Harris Holiday Style

One of the more gratifying aspects of blogging involves sharing other people's highly creative holiday traditions. December will be here in about three weeks, so I hope that posting some ideas now will help a few readers who are looking to get organized and inspired.

G & G editor and Belle Decor blogger, Haskell Harris, has always said that her parents created a sense of wonder for her as she grew up in a beautiful old Virginia house that functioned as headquarters for her mother Lou's interior design business and as a laboratory for her handy dad. Christmas was no exception.

When Haskell and her siblings were little, Lou found a huge antique horse-drawn sleigh at a flea market and brought it home to put on the big front porch that welcomed both her clients and family. "It was dark wicker with black leather seats and these iron skis at the bottom for going over actual snow. It looked like something from Austria and Mom usually decorated it with real greenery. Our entire family could fit in it," says Haskell.

"Mom also taught us how to make pomanders. My sister, Chandler, and I would sit at the dining room table with her and punch holes in each orange with a nail and then stuff cloves in them until we had enough to fill bowls around the house. They smelled absolutely amazing."


"Some of my earliest memories involve seeing Mom in the wrapping room of her store. Everything she does is very classic. She has bolts of lacquered wrapping paper in every color and spools and spools of different ribbons in varied widths and textures. At Christmas, she does all kinds of combinations: yellow lacquered paper and silver moire ribbon; white lacquered paper and a wide red plaid ribbon; silver moire paper and white ribbon with a candy cane tied into the bow, that sort of thing."


Lou also loves ribbon candy and she used to put loads of it into big glass jars with brass tops. In terms of ornaments, she loves color -- especially red -- and she's started collecting hand-blown Venetian glass ornaments in different shapes and sizes and using them everywhere.


"We used to have a huge real tree every year but in 1995 our Christmas tree caught on fire and burned the house down. The morning after the whole fiasco a package arrived on my grandmother's front steps (we lived there for months while our house was being rebuilt). It was a giant artificial tree that looked about as real as they get. To this day we're not sure who brought it by, but it's the one Mom still uses."

For Haskell, though, the tree and greenery have to be fresh. Stay tuned to learn about her own understated grown-up holiday style. Below is a hint.


All images courtesy Haskell unless otherwise noted. The vintage French ribbon was found on eBay, the wool tartan ribbon is from The Scottish Weaver, the picture of multiple ribbons is from Paris Made by Hand and photographed by Pia Jane Bijkerk. The ribbon candy is from Hammond's, and the glass ornament is from Venetian Glass Art. Ticking ribbon is from Ribbons Galore.