What Would Martha Do?

photo courtesy of Martha Stewart Living

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I was looking through my old copies of Martha Stewart's Christmas and Handmade Christmas: The Best of Martha Stewart Living for inspiration and ideas on a particularly vexing decorating challenge.


The first book tells how she decorates her house, wraps gifts, and cooks elaborate dishes for her family and friends throughout the holidays using a thirty day timeline. Nothing to help me. Handmade Christmas looked promising. I paged though pictures of boxes made from acorns, a wreath created from twenty kinds of succulents and starfish studded with silver. Close, but no banana. What I would like to ask Martha is,

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How do you Decorate a Mounted Musky for Christmas?

Thanks to the generosity of the world renowned musky fisherman, Deane Ferm, we have a beautiful 44", 22 lb musky hanging on our fireplace.  Musky has been hanging around since 1991. How can I make this magnificent fish blend in with the Christmas stockings, evergreen boughs, candles and holiday cards? Neither your books, nor your magazines could help, although I did find a rather interesting article on setting up a fish tank on your website http://www.marthastewart.com/article/set-up-a-fish-tanks

Well, I decided to keep in simple, no one likes a gaudy, overdone fish. So, Musky's head is tied with a green satin bow, two ornaments hang from his fins and a beautiful blue ornament rests in his mouth.

Nothing Says Christmas Like a Decorated Musky

Musky hanging above the fireplace

A close up of Musky

Now that my Christmas decorating dilemma has been resolved. I can share a few more traditional decorating schemes with you.  I made two wreaths using wreath forms from The Warehouse. The forms sell for a dollar.

jingle bell wreath

pine wreath with lights

wreath form

  

The rest of the photos are of our outdoor decorations.

front of the house

you can see our tree through the window

The lakefront view

The dogs' pen is decorated too

The next two decorations are tributes to my childhood Christmas' in Mequon and my Dad.

A little blue tree for Dad

A decorated front pole
completed before the New Year

Well, despite not getting any practical Northwoods holiday decorating advice from Martha Stewart, I'm still a big fan.  It looks like we're ready for Christmas.

With all these lights Santa Paws will surely find our house. Won't he?