Christmas House Tours

Sunday is the annual Marietta Christmas Candlelight Tour, where you get to walk through 8 restored historic homes that are decorated in all their holiday finery. This is the 7th year that I have gone on the tour and I totally look forward to it. Here is the tour lineup. I used to live in Marietta and these are homes that I've walked and driven past many times, composing in my head the lives that I think these people lead. There is something very satisfying in actually getting to tour their home and see how right or horribly wrong you were. The first house, the one with the tower, I've been in before. I drove past that house for years, totally pining to see the inside, cause it just looked so fabulous. Two years ago it was on the tour and I got my chance. My friends and I were were so excited on the walk there. When we got inside, our mouths dropped open and stayed open, through each room of each floor. And not because we were impressed. This house was like the head-on collision of Dynasty and Dallas. This house had been decorated to within an inch of it's life in about 1981 and then declared off limits. Nothing had changed. Everything matched: upholstery matched valances matched pillows matched cutains matched towels matched knick-knacks. A family member stood in every room making sure that nobody touched or stole anything (as if). We trudged in a long line of silent people with their jaws dragging on the floor. Everybody looked at each other wide-eyed. This is the also house with the famed monkey-room. A garden type room where everything was monkey. And I am scared of monkeys, so I didn't stay in there long. Monkey lamps, monkey chairs, monkey chandelier, monkey stencils, a very creepy monkey-paw ashtray (real). Everywhere you look....Monkeys. I will take a digital camera with me...hopefully we can take pictures. You will not believe this room. Anyway, I'm really excited. Maybe I'm a little voyeuristic, but I love seeing how other people live. If you look at the lineup, my favorite house of all times is on the tour this year for the first time (for me). The little yellow house with the wrap-around porch and the columns and the black shutters (#6). If that house ever went up for sale, I would seriously consider kissing the garden and the fruit trees goodbye. I've built that house up in my mind for so long, hopefully it lives up to my expectations. I'll let you know.