Christmas is really 12 months a year

I thought it might be fun to give everybody who enjoys our insane Holiday Open House, a little insight in to how it all goes down.

First off, I feel I need to mention that this year will be our absolute shortest amount of time for our most labor intensive, time consuming Design House of the year.
The October Design House came five days into the month.  That left us with just three and a half weeks for a total house redo, nine-jillion ornaments to unearth and price, new furniture to find, color palettes to determine, walls painted…oh my nerves!  You have no idea!!!!

An elf from the January 2012 show

So I'll reel it on back and start at the beginning of the process.

If you can believe it, it all starts in January.  As if we all haven’t had enough Christmas by mid-January, that’s when the next holiday season starts for me and Amy {we're not kidding, see this post from January 2011}.  We will head off to the Atlanta gift show where all of the newest freshest ideas are introduced to all retailers across the country.

There you will find floor after floor in one of three 20 story skyscrapers with all of the holiday notions you could ever imagine..Dancing mermaids in Santa pajamas, life-sized dancing elves, Easter bunny Santa, a soul-train Christmas, snow globes the size of small condominiums, a Dr. Seuss Christmas, glittered, striped, sparkly.....everything you could  possibly think of, and then about ten stories of stuff nobody in their right mind could dream up no matter many margaritas were in their Santa bag.

So why so early you ask?  Why not wait until August or September to go through this madness…when the Christmas season is not such a distant star?

Well, designers and artists come up with their various products for all of the different manufacturers. They place their orders for production based on the orders they receive at the show. The items are produced and shipped out during the summer and the companies that produced them are already focused on next spring.

Unpacking and pricing in the Design House attic.

Now don’t get me wrong, you can buy some holiday stuff later on in the year but the best of the best… the cream of the crop… not so much…It's done.. It's gone… and that company has moved on to the next season.  Seriously, I had no idea.

So that means we start receiving all of this beautiful stuff ..sometimes as early as May, and definitely throughout the summer months. So when the Design House is closed during June and July, what are we doing? …you guessed it… pricing Christmas balls.

This past summer, because of the launch of our online store in April, we needed to go to Atlanta in July to see what might still be available that we could put online this holiday season.

So it was 98 degrees outside and all day Amy and I are hunkered down in corridors of Christmas trees and garland and elves..then head outside for lunch and oh yea it's JULY …WE WERE SO CONFUSED!!!!!

So often when you’re wondering during our holiday season and particularly during our Holiday Design House, why something can't be reordered…that’s why in a nutshell.

Alrighty then....It's now up to us to sort through this myriad of stuff and decide who we want to be...
That's my next post for you, so stay tuned!

P.S. - If you want a quick look at how some of our completed rooms look, check out this short video we made for the 2011 Holiday Open House.