TOUR SETS THE STAGE FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Help Phone fundraiser features six homes decorated by designers
If you’re a fan of decorating for the holidays or just curious to see it done to the extreme in some of Metro Vancouver’s more opulent homes, you can’t beat the Kids Help Phone Homes for the Holidays tour, which is back for a 14th year.
This year’s tour, which takes place Nov. 24 and 25 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., features six homes from West Vancouver to Southlands, representing a mix of architectural and interior styles and decorated by leading interior designers and florists.
“The one thing I don’t like to have is the same type of home,” said Homes for the Holidays committee member Bianca Fusco Zanatta of Zanatta Homes.
One of the West Vancouver properties opening its doors (and gates) for the tour this year is an “updated classic,” said Vancouver designer and decorator Trish Knight of Trish Knight Design.
Knight handled the interior design of the home and also decorated it for the Homes for the Holidays tour.
“The homeowners are big believers in Kids Help Phone,” said Knight of the charity, which offers free online and telephone counselling to children and youth across Canada.
“They have 14-year-old twin girls. And the kids were the inspiration for the design — the kids and Christmas. One of the girls is a competitive dancer, specifically ballet, and the other is a baker, so we’re decorating the room downstairs as well, themed for their passions.”
The concept of the design for the Homes for the Holidays tour is based around entertaining and “sparkle,” said Knight, wanting it to feel both “homey” and elegant.
“We’re doing a warm winter palette that ranges from cream to apricot into deep burgundies and we’re having specialty cakes and cookies made, which are glittery looking domes,” she said.
The retail sponsor for the home, Knight said, is the Hudson’s Bay at Park Royal and its Christmas decor selection this year just happened to include “beautiful ballerinas” and Nutcracker-themed ornaments, along with those that look like sugar cookies, macaroons and soft-serve ice cream, which work well with the decor theme.
“We are using everything from Christmas ornaments to toys to kitchenware,” she said.
This particular home will also be where Meinhardt Fine Foods’ pop-up cafe will be located, Knight said.
“They’re going to do beautiful cookies and macaroons, coffee and hot chocolates,” Knight said.
Also included on the tour is a new home in Vancouver’s Southlands neighbourhood, decorated by interior designer Karin Bohn and her team at House of Bohn.
“We really wanted to do something that was very rich in colour,” Bohn said. “Our inspiration was the tag line a ‘cocoa Bohnfire,’ a play on my last name Bohn. So we were thinking of bonfires and gathering almost like you’d be sitting around the fire in winter roasting marshmallows. So we have the whites and marshmallow tones, the wood tones and the earth tones, that was really our jumping-off point.”
To achieve this, Bohn and her team brought in a large stained walnut dining table and set it for Christmas dinner, using “gold tones, rich reds, spice tones” and colours that reflect nutmeg, cinnamon and other Christmasy spices.
“Gold, which we see throughout the house in the lighting, in the hardware and stair railing, that was a natural accent on the dining table,” she said.
These colours, she said, complement the caramel browns and marble seen throughout the residence.
“It’s very sophisticated and high end with oversize lighting,” said Bohn. “And we really wanted a dining table where you could host a really big Christmas dinner party.”
To complement the modern esthetic of this home, Bohn’s team also played around with other updated Christmas decor items like nutcrackers in pure white, which can be left as is or painted however you wish and small, woven, geometric Christmas trees.
“It’s updated macrame, but Christmas style,” said House of Bohn interior designer Jill Chan.
To find out more about the tour or to purchase tickets — they’re $50 online — visit kidshelpphone.ca.
We’re doing a warm winter palette that ranges from cream to apricot into deep burgundies.