San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Brighten your home with fun holiday décor ideas
If there is one silver lining to this year’s shelterinplace demands, it’s that more of us have been focusing on making our homes truly our palaces. We’ve cleaned out closets, organized garages, planted gardens and taken up hobbies. Sourdough bread baking, anyone?
So as the holidays approach, it’s not surprising that many of us are thinking about decorating. Whether it’s for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Las Posadas, we can all make our houses festive retreats.
Thanks to the internet, planning holiday décor is easier than ever. You can shop from the safety of home, and enjoy delivery or curbside pickup. You can also surf for ideas from the professionals straight from the web. And should you decide to enlist some help decorating your home’s outside from the pros, no one is judging that, either.
The team at the familyowned Christmas Light Pros of San Francisco, for example, has been installing custom, exterior lighting fantasies for residential clients since 2006, all across the Bay Area. Large installations like giant LEDdraped Christmas trees are better left to the experts, but founders Mark McGinty and Anne Dijamco also offer trendy ideas that people can do themselves, such as the very popular glowing balls hung from trees. You can buy these glowing orbs at home décor stores all around the Bay Area,
or even make your own with chicken wire and LED lights.
San Francisco’s Fantastico has been a prime shop for purchasing holiday décor of all kinds, either at the 21,000squarefoot retail store at 6th Street between Bryant and Brannan streets or online. Sadly, owner Mike Ferro announced this spring that coronavirus, neighborhood construction and road closures were forcing the store’s closure, but until Dec. 31, customers can snag great items at 30 to 70% discounts.
You can shop yearround at the Holiday Shoppe in Sausalito, too, for unique and unusual gifts and collectibles made by local artists and from around the world.
Owner Hengameh “May” Rafii has been managing the store since 1988, and offers suggestions for customers wanting that perfect statement
or accent piece for their homes. That might be two of the store’s most popular items this year a 10inch tall lighted, musical phone booth with Santa inside, surrounded by continuous swirling glitter ($39.50) or a 12.5inch long lighted, musical water train with Santa, elves and swirling glitter inside ($79.99).
The Holiday Shoppe also connects with one of this year’s biggest trends — celebrating our pets as we spend all day at home. It tempts with a delightful sevenpiece nativity scene set with baby Jesus in a manger, Mary, Joseph and the Three Wise Men played by resin stone dogs wrapped in blanket robes ($58.99). Options for all items include contactless, curbside pickup or online shopping.
Marisa’s Fantasia and Marisa’s Christmas Fantasia are two shops in the historic Lan Mart
Building in downtown Petaluma, boasting nearly endless shelves of holiday staples and oneofakind knick knacks. Family owned since 1972, it’s famous for its collection of more than 50 themed trees available for purchase, plus always bestselling Christopher Radko mouthblown, handpainted glass ornaments.
People celebrating Hanukkah will do well to look at Berkeley’s Afikomen Judaica, which is open for instore and, more recently, online shopping. Specializing in works by local and Israeli artists, it also offers practical but beautiful items like a silver hammered kiddush cup and plate. The gracefully curved vessel is trimmed with a blue stripe around its stem ($64.95), and the store even sells the ceremonial wine and grape juice to go alongside.
No matter what holiday you’re celebrating, during these often stressful times, candles can not only be decorative, but
offer comfort with their gentle flickering glow that warms up winter. As Soyful Aromas founder Janet Campbell explained, her aromatherapy candles offer “the epitome of relaxation, transcending consumers to an ultimate state of selfcare when they need it most.”
Handmade in small batches at her Hayward studio, the candles are made with natural, renewable, nontoxic soy wax with cotton wicks. Scent oils are phthalate free to burn clean and slower with longer scent release.
“Oftentimes, we forget about our sense of smell and the power of aromatherapy to help us unwind and relax, enhance our mood or remind us of fond memories,” Campbell said.
Her candle tins and jars are recyclable, she added, as empty tins can be repurposed to hold jewelry, and the heavy based jars function as cocktail glasses. Cheers to that.