By Jennifer M. Aguilar
This time of year most families enjoy gathering together to deck the halls, so that when Christmas Day rolls around they can celebrate the holiday in style. But few matriarchs put as much care into their decorating as Karen Marshall, who has been turning her Plano home into a bonafide winter wonderland for decades now.
“I’m a big decorator; I’ve been decorating all day for a week getting the house and yard ready… I have six trees I put up. Each tree is decorated different; some of that I grew up with and some I started since I married… I do a tree that is a live tree and all the ornaments on that tree are handmade. I have one tree that I buy an ornament for every year. I’ve been married 50 years, so I have one from each year. I do one that is all nutcrackers and drums,” Marshall said.
That’s not to say that decorating is a solo affair, though. “I have a playroom on the third floor, and the granddaughters have cottages they decorate, and a tree they decorate…I put felt snowflakes all over the floor, so it’s like a winter wonderland.”
The Marshall home is also filled with a variety of nativity scenes, some wooden, some needlepoint, some origami, etc. “And I have lots of Santas and stockings for every family member on the staircase, and two nutcrackers on each step… My dad [who was an architect] used to say, ‘You don’t decorate your house for Christmas. You desecrate it.’ He was not as big of Christmas person as I am. I remember he used to say to my mom, ‘That’s enough.’ But she would say, ‘I’m not through,’ and she would keep decorating.”
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