October 31, 2026… how did that happen???
Last night the kids carved pumpkins. Krista helped set them up on a plastic sheet in their kitchen, and the three of them went to town cutting, gutting, carving. Creating pumpkin masterpieces! I stayed curled on the couch under my warm blanket! I wandered up once to take a picture and tell them how crazy it is that they are all now grown enough to carve their own pumpkins unassisted.
This morning I felt it, though. I felt like I missed out on something, not because I particularly enjoy carving pumpkins, because I don’t! They’re cold and they’re gooey. But because, for a brief moment, my memory took me back to carving pumpkins in that little farmhouse I grew up in.
The house was small, two bedrooms… we used the back door…
When you’d walk in, you were in our entryway, which had a laundry pair on one side with an exposed hot water tank, and a big chest freezer on the other side. Two windows with yellow sheer curtains… When it snowed, if you laid across the laundry pair staring up out of that window, it felt like you were flying through the snow!! My Mom would turn on the dryer so my flight would be warm! If you visited us at Halloween, a pumpkin sat atop the freezer… When you came for Christmas, there was always a small poinsettia where the pumpkin had been.
Hang your coat on the tall golden coat rack… don’t be alarmed when it falls over… it was plastic, ridiculous, and the ’80s were the start of decor looks over function!
That door over there is the bathroom with its full-size antique clawfoot tub. Hand-built white cabinets and an oval mirror. Wicker laundry basket, wicker towel holder, wicker shelf, and a sink that worked 50/50 of the time! But that tub was glorious, and the proximity to the laundry pair meant Mom would often deliver warm-from-the-dryer towels as my bath ended. The smell of Ivory soap on my skin as I wrapped myself in a warm towel was perfection.
Walk through the room and you’re in the kitchen, but first look up to see where my dad hung his keys in the square archway.
He hung them from our old Jolly Jumper hook!
In the corner, a wood-burning stove with a gas oven and burners (which now sounds terrifying), with the big black chimney pipe going into the wall.
Olive green fridge.
Old dining table with the high-back chairs covered in cracked printed vinyl. Lots of browns and yellows… like the forest floor in early November before the snow.
A crystal sugar and cream set on the table on a doily… always full of sugar, but the cream jug held random tiny things my momma found in pockets, on the wicker bathroom shelf, on the floor! Usually a screw, a penny, a paper clip! Nothing of real value, but always be sure to check every now and then because she was known to get mad and dump it all in the garbage!
The only phone in the house, attached to the wall.
Those walls covered in wallpaper that my mom would change out every few years. Always turned out beautiful! She had a knack for wallpapering no one could match, but her mood in the process… watch out!
Two windows with cheery yellow curtains. One of those windows was used as a cat door. Always muddy paw prints on the outside wall as our cats would jump up to come inside. That’s the same window that got smashed one summer afternoon and replaced before my parents ever returned home. That’s one secret Earl and I never did tell them!
Wood cupboards, upper and lower, along the one wall with a grey Formica countertop and double stainless sink. A coffee pot that seemed to always be full. A microwave (which I’m certain was the first produced 🤣).
The floors were old printed linoleum… also browns and golds. Definitely worse for wear in some spots, but that didn’t stop Mom from getting on her hands and knees to wax them! They always looked their best.
A wood breadbox on the counter, a mail sorter hung on the wall. Don’t rummage through it unless you like the wrath of Carol… it may have looked unorganized, but that was her filing system… Well, that and the papers beside the microwave and behind the breadbox!!
Always a bottle of Sunlight dish soap on the sink board.
Seasonal dish towels hung from the drawer pulls, and her hand-crocheted dishcloths rested over the sink divider. I can’t tell you how many times my brother and I stood in that spot after dinner arguing over who was washing and who was drying. I’d give my left pinky toe to do those dishes today.
Off the left side was a bedroom. Mine at one point, but Earl’s first, and for a brief time as kids we shared it. Small… wood paneling (except that one wall with superhero wallpaper… ever go to sleep with Superwoman and her lasso of truth staring at you?!!), a big window (but not so big Katie couldn’t jump out it….twice), and carpet in a hardwood print. The Donald Duck nightlight was a nice touch. Cozy.
The other doorway led to the living room. It felt giant at the time. But now I know how small it was. Again, brown carpet, I’m sure shag and lush at some point, but worn and soft in my day! I can almost remember the way it smelled.
A wood box TV sitting on the floor in the corner. On top, an old western wagon decor piece and the one remaining Clydesdale horse ornament. I used to stare at that treasure. Once, in a fever-induced delirium, I remember asking my Mom why the cowboys were floating. I still don’t know!
Always on a doily under the wagon… under everything, really. My grandmother made them. I still have some. I still use them, even when they weren’t shabby chic cool. Also a carved, almost muted, dark psychedelic ‘70s candle, like a standing pine cone with its peeled leaves, on top of that TV. A childhood lesson in restraint, I only daydreamed of peeling it to see the colours I’m sure were under there!
Baseboard heaters warmed the house when we weren’t burning wood. I loved to lie in front of the long living room one and put my legs up over top of it. Toasty tush time!
A velvet art painting hung above that heater. Very ‘70s chic decor. An old gristmill waterwheel scene. The paint hard in the soft velvet. The wood frame with its ornate carved notches. I wonder where it ended up. On the other wall hung an old clock with a holographic horse-head sticker. I might have been guilty of that addition, but I’m certain I blamed Earl.
The kind of clock you’d wind up with a key, and it would chime like a wall-hanging version of a grandfather clock. Sometimes I’d convince my brother or my dad to wind it. Tick tock… tick tock… Ding dong!!!
On either side of that clock on the wood-panelled wall was a horse decoration that had been pressed out of metal. I now realize how perfect the patina was on those.
The chimney from the kitchen wood stove caused a box shape in the corner from floor to the cardboard-tiled ceiling. Right in the middle was a round metal plate-type inset. It was there for the chimney sweep. Or Santa’s door, depending on who you asked. We didn’t have a fireplace, and Earl reassured me Santa could pop that out lickety-split, and later progressed to using the door because I was convinced Santa would sizzle to death in that trap!
On the adjacent wall (white wood grain with gold inlay) were two more velvet-framed art pictures, but these two depicted forest nature scenes. My parents were clearly high-end ‘70s art connoisseurs! Those two frames were perfect for Easter egg hiding atop! It never failed, though, every July we’d find a dusty marshmallow egg overlooked in the spring!
In my younger years, that room housed a ‘70s gold sectional with a cubby door that turned into the perfect hidey-hole… somewhere there is a photo of a toddler-sized me in PJs wedged in there, grinning from ear to ear!! On top was a little table, my mom’s bronze deer, and a beautiful amber glass lamp. Later we upgraded to the ‘90s couch with the crazy colour squiggles through it. It wasn’t an upgrade.
The far back and side walls had huge windows at chest height with curtains to the floor. They were always closed. I don’t think we were vampires, but someone definitely had a hate on for natural light. Though one Christmas, my Dad and my brother put Christmas lights in the holly tree outside that window as a surprise for us. That Christmas, in the evening, we opened them a bit! Those lights never came down because I suspect sticking your arms into the holly bush was on no one’s to do list. We lit them every Christmas, chipped and worn until the last one burned out.
There was another clock made of a section of tree stump that hung on the wall. Gold plastic numbers, the type I stumbled on every now and then in the thrift craft section when someone has cleaned out their grandmother craft closet. I don’t remember it ever having a battery in it. Sometimes I would change it to whatever time it was, and for a brief moment it was accurate.
In through that other door was my parents’ room and what felt like the closest thing to fancy we had. Oddly, a huge mirror framed ‘70s art piece of Jesus overlooking heaven hung on the wall… we weren’t religious. It was unsettling and felt oddly judgmental.
That room held the only actual closet in the house. Those top shelves felt like a secret Narnia I couldn’t quite reach. The carpet was teal shag. I remember pretending it was the ocean and a big queen four-poster wood bed was my ship. The room was also wood-panelled with a bed-matching dresser with a huge mirror, matching nightstand, matching highboy dresser… behind that dresser lived our two boxes of Christmas decorations. One box was all the tree decorations, and the other was everything else.
The silver and red garland that hung from corner to corner on the ceiling of the living room… my mom would tack it up in the not-quite-middle because the light was in the way… adorned with red thread-wrapped Christmas balls and two candy canes per section (after the big grocery shop)… the beautiful coffee table had a long square doily, and that flocked candle holder sat in the centre… a candy dish on one side (I remember foil-wrapped Santas, foil-wrapped balls, ribbon candy, red and green jujubes, Smarties, etc.) and a dish of mixed nuts on the other.
In the under-section of the coffee table, on one side stood a big Santa candle and on the other a snowman.
Then there was the tree… always real, and I thought huge… it wasn’t.
We only got the tree for two weeks tops because the combination of a real tree with baseboard heating, a wood-burning stove, and a menopausal mother with a December 27 birthday meant that tree was a ticking time bomb!
Speaking of ticking time bombs, we had this Christmas angel for years that would shed tiny pieces of fiberglass from her wings, and at least once a season my dad or my brother would have to fish one out of my foot while I screamed. She eventually got cremated in the wood stove. I can’t say I was sad to see her go, and of all the things I’ve searched to replace, she never made the list!
We didn’t have a fireplace, so the stockings got tacked up under the pressed-metal wall decorations.
My Christmas colouring did a lot of heavy lifting for the kitchen decor. Stuck to the fridge like my own personal art show.
We didn’t have the seasonal things I do now. No one switched out the bedding or dishes for Christmas versions. No one swapped the towels for holiday motifs in the bathroom. The sheets didn’t whisper “boo” or “Merry Christmas” depending on the calendar date!
Christmas decor was simply the decorations on the coffee table, the ceiling decor, and the tree. But pulling out those two boxes of decor felt like Christmas in a way I haven’t felt in years.
I took those little bits of Christmas I grew up with and exploded them into the way I do things. At my house now, every surface gets Christmas decor… it’s not a candy dish, it’s a candy charcuterie board. The tree stays two months! The flocked candle holder, the wax Santa and snowman, and bits of that tinsel garland still oversee it all. It’s Rockefeller Square to that tiny cottage Christmas… and if I’m being honest… that farmhouse felt more like Christmas with its handful of decor than I’ve ever successfully decked these halls… Of course, I know that’s just my quiet feeling, and Jacob someday will think about the way we did things here and try to recreate the feeling.
…so have yourself a merry little Christmas now…
After the holiday season, a tiny end table with a single drawer replaced the Christmas tree and my tiny green armchair sat there beside the other doorway to what was in reality the front entry room. But in our life, it was my “toy room.” Housed my toys as a kid, then a desk and my whole life of treasures. I spent hours in that drafty 7×5 “room” playing school. That ’70s goldenrod carpet. I loved that room. It was mine.
I’d make seasonal decorations, had my little chalkboard hanging on the door. Chilly in the winter from the gap under the door (which we secured with a board with a V-cut to wedge under the bronze cold metal handle because any skeleton key could unlock it!).
We’d have to stuff a towel under the door to keep the cold out and prevent my papers from moulding. Realizing now how frustrating that must have been for my mom, but to me it was just normal…
When I entered high school, my mom put in new carpet and wallpaper with maps of the world on it. I don’t remember much of those teenage years other than homework in that room, but my soul remembers the window on either wall. I can still remember how I didn’t like to go in there at night if the blinds were up.
What was I hiding from? Because this morning at 5 am I stood topless in front of my living room window, sipping coffee and drinking in the quiet of the still-dark new day, like I do so often.
I hardly ever close those blinds.
