12/12/2019 by The Artist's Child

The Tree and Creative Family Celebrations

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The Tree as a centrepiece of the festive season brings joy to family celebrations and allows for all kinds of creative interpretations. In our home it has been the focal point for gatherings of family and friends so we try to put an effort into making it a little bit different each year, without spending a fortune or getting too stressed. I can usually find something in our decoration stash to re-invent the tree every season whether it is a real or artificial pine, or the alternative kind.

One of our most memorable trees was a Monterey Pine that we placed beside the fireplace in the old part of our house. This was the largest tree we have ever had. It was nine feet tall and nearly reached the ten foot ceiling. Ellie and I went to a tree farm to choose it and brought it home with the help of our uncle and his trailer. It was a job getting it on to the tree stand and I’ll never forget the strong scent of pine that permeated the house. We fed the tree regularly with sugar, vinegar and a few drops of bleach (to kill mould) that was added to the bucket in which the trunk was placed. This kept it looking fresh for the whole festive period.

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We had an old fashioned Christmas party that year where everyone came dressed in costumes of the late Victorian era. The pine tree was decorated in this style, with candles, toys, papier mache and glass ornaments. We already had many of these decorations and found inexpensive items at two dollar shops and chain stores. On top of the tree was a large papier mache star.

We did not light the real tree candles in case naked flames ignited the volatile pine needles. Instead the room was lit with large candles in the fireplace and assorted candle sticks and holders, as well as some oil lamps. The light reflected in the shiny glass baubles of the tree and created a lovely atmosphere. Luckily it was a cool summer’s evening and the candles did not generate too much heat.

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All our guests entered into the spirit of the occasion and we had a wonderful evening trying to recreate a celebration from a bygone era. We may have lacked the snow but once the sun had eventually set it was hard to tell that it was summer and the tree gave us a taste of a northern winter Yuletide.

More recent trees at our place have been the alternative kind, being created from a music stand, a dead tree and a ladder, all of which suited the more modern section of our house and fitted well with the summer season. Here are some photos.

This year I dug out a 1970s, six foot, green tinsel tree from the attic. (That is the great thing about old houses with roof storage. Plenty of places to store old family items that can be rediscovered and reused.) We have not put up this tree since 2007, so I thought it was about time and it looks good in our more casual family room.

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When sparkling aluminium and vinyl trees first appeared they must have seemed so modern compared with the traditional pine trees. The only thing they have in common are the branches formed into a cone shape. They remind me of something from the space age, like some strange satellite antenna. Many examples of these shiny vintage trees are available to buy online and they are especially relevant where it is summer and no sign of snow. They look great with the sunshine reflecting on the metallic foliage.

Mixing both original and contemporary ornaments can give new life to a vintage tree. As well as some vintage decorations, such as the synthetic silk balls, I used more recent decorations from our collection that also suit this tree, like white, gold and silver stars, aluminium tree and butterfly cutouts. Basically anything sparkly and shiny. Amongst the branches are white and silver Christmas Crackers (or bon bons) to hide the trunk. I did not put on any lights or glass baubles because electricity, glass and dogs are a recipe for disaster. And speaking of dogs, we have placed our tree on a small table to prevent the original silk balls being appropriated by our dogs. The last time we set up this tree one of our previous fox terriers stole and destroyed a few. It would be too tempting at ground level, especially as our younger dog loves balls. So far so good. The tree looks quite dramatic and nearly touches the ceiling.

Our vintage tree will be a cheerful feature at our end of year party and will allow us to time travel back to the mid twentieth century for our celebrations. Nothing like cocktails and retro finger food partaken around the tree on a summer’s evening to put everyone in happy, holiday mood, especially when the sun does not set until around 9.30 pm.

Have fun and be creative with your tree. Whether it is real, traditional or modern, there is something special about getting together with family and friends around the tree for whatever you celebrate at this time of year.

Thank you for dropping by to my erratic blog and wishing all of you Happy Holidays and a joyful Festive Season.

Kat

The following is a typically Aussie, irreverent take on a well known Christmas song by Bucko and Champs (Greg Champion and Colin Buchanan) You won’t hear this one in stores!

22/12/2017 by The Artist's Child

Memories Versus Minimalism

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Recently I read an article on a local paper that had suggestions about how to decorate your home for Christmas with minimal decorations. Although I like to reduce clutter, I think this is a step too far. Wiping out all the reminders of past celebrations, especially if it helps you to remember people who are not around anymore, is a little bit harsh.

While Ellie and I have some simple modern decorations in our family room, we still like to have a corner of the house devoted to tradition and to remember the good times and those who made them special. Many of the items that we use as decorations were gifts or inherited from relatives or friends, such as the objects in the winter scene I created on an old china tray in our front living room. I had fun with dachshunds chasing a hare under an “ice” tree and happy Christmas geese who’d managed to dodge the pot.

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Hanging on a faux stag horn candlestick are some Santa balls that are reminders of a happy celebration with our mother. These were among the baubles on a large cut Christmas tree (a Monterey Pine) we decorated for a family party. I think we used every decoration we owned on that tree, plus some inexpensive papier maché ones we bought at a two-dollar shop. We dressed up in costumes from the 1890s that Ellie sewed or were put together from charity shop finds of blouses with mutton-chop sleeves. All our guests came in costume, including an uncle looking very dapper with a fake moustache, straw boater hat and striped blazer.

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Pillar candles and bowls of evergreen plants, like ivy, from our garden, decorated two tables, with an ivy swag running along the stair banisters. Ivy swags were also draped around the fireplace, with bowls of Cyprus pine on the mantelpiece. Below this hung colourful woolen Christmas stockings. As it was summer pillar candles filled the fireplace. We did not turn on the electric lights and used candles and old oil lamps as lighting. The only concession to modernity was a hidden stereo playing classic Christmas carols.

Ellie and I made the Christmas crackers (bonbons) from gold, silver and Florentine paper. Inside we included homemade crepe paper hats, small inexpensive gifts, like little wooden scoops, sets of dice or decorative bottle stoppers and some really terrible jokes. We had the traditional roast dinner followed by plum pudding and there was lots of merriment. It was one of the most enjoyable Christmas parties we have ever had.

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The candy cane also hanging on the candlestick is an old family decoration that came from our grandparents and brings to mind childhood celebrations with our father. I also made the large red heart from salt dough during a craft session with a friend. So many good times to remember.

Maybe I’m being sentimental but I don’t want to eliminate all of the past just to embrace the latest trend, which seems rather cold and the opposite of the festive spirit. Keeping some old decorations means you can still hang onto your special memories while you make new ones.

I hope everyone has a wonderful festive season.

Kat

I love schmaltzy Christmas songs and here’s a medley that includes a great version of Brenda Lee’s Rocking Around the Christmas Tree performed by Michael Bublé and Carly Rae Jepsen.

28/10/2017 by The Artist's Child

A Hand-Made Halloween

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Over the past ten years in Melbourne the festival of Halloween has become more widely celebrated and seems to be getting more commercial with large public events in many shopping centres. The St Kilda Town Hall even has a hugely popular Haunted House experience. We are increasingly getting Halloween themed catalogues in our letterbox advertising elaborate and expensive decorations and costumes, as well as the usual treats. Before all this commercialization most local Halloween celebrations were limited to home parties where decorations and costumes were usually homemade and trick or treating was rare.

Magazines used to be the main source of ideas for making party decorations and costumes. We have that really old party magazine from the 1890s, mentioned in a previous post, which has a wonderful section on Halloween, as well as the more recent Australian Women’s Weekly Home Library publication, Perfect Parties. No one was expected to spend a fortune and it was so much more fun and creative to make things.

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As children Ellie and I had a Halloween Party. As there was little available in the way of decorations, except for plastic spiders and orange and black balloons, we invited some friends for a sleepover before the party and had a great time making decorations for the family room and garden. Out of black card we cut black cats, owls, bats, broomsticks and the like and hung these from sticks of bamboo to create mobiles.

A neighbour’s black cat

In one corner of the garden we built a witch’s house against the side fence with a sheet of corrugated iron for the roof and bamboo poles (cut from the garden) tied together with twine to form the walls and a window. We painted a sign that said “Witches Hollow”. In front of this structure dad made a tripod from wooden poles and hung a cast iron camp oven for a cauldron over some unlit wood. These days you can have a fire in a metal fire pit. Probably one with a wire safety grill is best to protect from dangerous sparks.

Cast iron camp oven

Metal fire pit

A decorated table is a wonderful centrepiece for a Halloween party. You don’t need to buy special tableware. Our grandmother gave us a vintage tablecloth with embroidered black cats, but you could make a tablecloth from orange fabric or just use orange crepe paper decorated with cutout black cats, bats, owls etc. She also made us a beautiful cake decorated with black cats. It is easy to make cupcakes and decorate these with black cat sweets, jelly babies and snakes, together with orange or chocolate sprinkles on plain white icing. There are so many creative ideas around for making Halloween food these days, especially online. Fresh fruits and vegetables, like pumpkins, turnips and tomatoes make great table decorations and are a reminder of the autumnal origins of Halloween, even if it is spring here. And you can use them to make a soup or put them on the barbeque after the party.

Black Cat Cupcakes

Only recently in Australia has it been possible to get large orange pumpkins to carve at Halloween. Supermarkets now have these to buy for the occasion. We had to make do with the green kind. Our grandfather carved a jack-o-lantern out of a pumpkin and fitted it with an electric light bulb to put on the front veranda. He also had a very old papier-mache mask of a skull and put a bulb in this as well. They looked wonderfully spooky to welcome the guests. Now front porch decorations seem to be becoming more elaborate and more common here, but you don’t need to buy frightening manikins that cost a heap. A homemade scarecrow could look just as creepy especially if you give it a scary clown face.

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Most people who came to our party had homemade costumes. I created one from a long white satin bridesmaid dress that I had worn the previous year. Over this I wore a filmy pale blue robe of my mothers and made a cone-shaped hat from white cardboard, stuck on some gold stars, attached a filmy white scarf from the peak and stapled some hat elastic to keep it on. With a wand made from a piece of silver painted dowel I was a Sorceress. Mum made Ellie a skeleton costume by sticking white electrical tape to a black polo neck top and tights.

Guest’s costumes ranged from the usual witches or ghosts, to someone dressed as a pea pod with green balloons for the peas. There were some very creative costumes, such as a hand painted skull and crossbones outfit and a witch doctor, who had lots of small handmade mojo bags attached to a belt. I remember we all had a great time dancing to pop music and playing Murder in the Dark, which still seems to be a popular party game. Of course there were prizes for the best costumes and little bags of treats for everyone to take home.

With a bit of creativity you can avoid a lot of the cost and over commercialization of Halloween and still have a great party. And if it is for just for adults, substitute more appropriate food, drink and entertainment. Be as crazy as you like. Why should kids have all the fun?

Kat

Probably one of the best songs ever written about a ghost is Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. The famous “red dress” video of this song has had many millions of hits on You Tube so here is the “white dress” version.

03/07/2017 by The Artist's Child

Strange Social Entertainments of the Past

Times change. What can be fashionable in one century can seem really peculiar in another. This is especially true of types of entertainment. We have an old battered copy of a magazine called Social Evening Entertainments produced by The Butterick Publishing Co in 1895. It is full of ideas for social get-togethers that were popular in the late 19^th century. This book has both motivated and amused several generations of our family. Some of the celebrations included are still relevant like Christmas, Easter and Halloween and there are some interesting ideas to inspire. There are others that are quaint or just plain weird.

Frontispiece, Social Evening Entertainments, 1895

Each party theme is told as a story with a family or group of friends deciding to hold a social gathering. We learn about the invitations, decorations, food and entertainment, through the eyes of the characters. This is why the magazine so delightful to read as you are taken into the lives of people over a century ago and learn a lot about the attitudes of the time. It is a work of fiction and a social history, as well as an instruction manual.

The Artist’s Studio Party got my attention because I was interested in how the ordinary person perceived the creative life in those days. You can read it for yourself below (just click on the image). The scene was set to create the 1890s idea of Boho, with the “garret” decorated with exotic rugs and Asian objects. A drawing game was played on an easel that could be a forerunner of Pictionary, with guests having to guess the object drawn. Wooden trays were cut into palette shapes upon which the simple but probably expensive food was served. There does not seem to be any alcohol provided so it does not bear much resemblance to a real artist’s life in that period. No Absinthe in sight. And the English walnuts served in silver paper paint tubes held together by glue and dabbed with possibly toxic paint were likely to poison the guests. This type of entertainment is a wonderfully naïve depiction of the artistic life and must have provided a lot of fun for the participants who were spared the reality of starving in a garret.

There seems to have been an obsession with instructional themes. Today the very idea of a Mutual Improvement Entertainment, an Evening with Familiar Objects or a Geography party would make people come up with all kinds of foolproof excuses for non-attendance. But these were obviously popular subjects back then before radio quizzes and TV game shows. The suggestions for the Geography Party are very detailed from globe-shaped invitations to scorecards for geographical guessing games and decorations. Further entertainment consisted of a geography match with two teams who competed by answering more geography related questions. The prizes included a gold metal Grecian style stick pin and silk and globe decorated Mouchoir Case (handkerchief case). Even the menu stuck with the theme. This is a party that you would need to study for in advance and can’t have been much fun for those with poor general knowledge about the world. Glad this type of event has died a natural death. Trivial Pursuit is much more fun.

Some quite odd party themes were for a Senses Party, a Jewel Party and a Poverty or Hard Times Party. In the senses party entertainments were based around each of the five senses with mystery substances to smell and taste, memorizing objects on a tray for sight, recognizing musical instruments for sound and touching unknown items while blind folded for touch. The sixth sense did not come into it, so no ESP games. Taste and smell did not always include pleasant things. To me the activities are a bit like some strange scientific experiment that you might never want to repeat. For a jewel party, the female guests were invited to wear as much of their jewellery as possible and to tell myths and legends about the type of stones they were wearing. It could have ended up being an occasion devoted to one-upmanship like todays socialites and celebrities walking the red carpet.

In complete contrast the Poverty Party was about entertainment without any frills. It was to show solidarity and sympathy for the poor. All items of good furniture, curtains and ornaments were to be put away, and replaced with blankets and plain linen on the floors. The hosts and guests would dress in old clothes, eat simple, homemade food and dance to music provided by local needy musicians. After the event the fabric and blankets were to be donated to the poor. I can’t help thinking that this theme is trying a bit too hard in the frugality department and it is all about the well off feeling good about themselves. Holding a public event for the local poor, who could not afford a party, with lots of food and fun would have been kinder and if you are experiencing hard times, who wants to be reminded of the fact.

There are some very quaint party ideas in the book that would have been time-consuming to produce such as a Logomachy Party. Logomachy was a word game with the letters of the alphabet on a set of cards. It is like Scrabble meets the old card game Casino. The guests were to take part in this game for entertainment. The party in the associated story was held in the springtime, so there were homemade flower shaped invitations and cardboard butterflies and flowers decorated the room and tables. Rabbit decorations were made from peanuts in the shell with brown paper ears. You don’t see a lot of peanuts at children’s parties anymore because of the allergy dangers.

The most unusual food item was the dessert: nests of whipped cream in shallow crystal saucers filled with coloured eggs made from wine jelly. Blowing the white and yoke out of real eggs created these eggs. The liquid jelly was then poured into the cleaned shells through a funnel. After it had set they were peeled to reveal the jelly eggs. This dessert would have taken a lot of patience and care to prepare, as the potential for disaster was ever-present. Jelly was very popular in the 19^th century but I doubt that anyone would have the time to go to this much trouble nowadays.

While many of the social entertainments may seem out of date and rather boring in the 21^st century, one can only admire the ingenuity and imagination employed in the creation of this book. It can teach us a lot about making do, recycling objects and materials and valuing the handmade over the mass-produced. There was also a great sense of community in those days where such gatherings brought everyone together, even the different generations. This is evident in an Old Folks Entertainment, where young people and their parents dressed in clothes from past decades, sang old songs and ate nostalgic food. Not dissimilar to modern 60s, 70s and 80s parties.

Hollywood party decorations

Hollywood party decorations: recycled tinsel, film negative strips, red scarf and 2$ shop feather boa, vintage glass head filled with gold fabric remnant

60s flower power party decoration, recycled fabric flowers from op shop and ribbon, white paper shopping bag with attached vintage note paper

Perhaps popular themes of today, like Hollywood or Hippie Parties, will seem bizarre to future generations. Whatever the period everyone enjoys a good party.

One of my favorite party songs from the past is Lionel Ritchie’s All Night Long. Love those 80s clothes and dancers. It is so joyful.

Kat