(audience applause)
Welcome everybody, welcome.
So, I don't usually like to
force my audience to share pictures and stories
from my home life, but this year I put up an Instagram
Story of all the decorating that I do for the holidays.
People really seemed to love it and my team asked me if
I would share it with you guys in our in-studio
and at-home audience on the show.
So, I am a little Christmas-a-holic.
I do start two days before Thanksgiving with the music
and the trees.
And I put up seven trees upstate between my house,
and my mom's house, and our little guest pad.
Let me just walk you through some of our trees here
and then I've got a couple of quick tips for 'ya.
So this is my favorite tree, it's on our back porch.
And what I love about this is if you take a small
tree and put it up on a table, this one's up on a big
wooden base table.
It looks like the tree is so much bigger than
it actually is, so you're cheating.
You're decorating half the height of what the
tree appears to be.
This one's all done with owls, and birds, and icicles,
and frosty.
Another tip I kind of enjoy is that we don't really
skirt our trees in a traditional way.
If you guys go to the next photo there.
This tree is skirted with fake snow, pine cones
from literally the back yard, a couple of fake sprigs,
and those little pheasants, and squirrels,
and the mushroom there.
So, it just looks like it could have happened in nature.
Then the next pic is the next tree.
That goes up two days before.
This pic is the one that goes up the day after
Thanksgiving, this is the one children love.
It's bright, it's kind of back-in-the-day.
And this one is skirted with a big crocheted blanket.
And I have these giant elves that look like they're
decorating the tree themselves.
And the little deer and kind of jumping out from the tree.
I'm just tryna kind of bring the trees to life.
But, that's the one kids love the most.
And then, if you don't have room for a tree,
in New York we have no room for a tree, we just
decorate our window sills.
But here, in one corner of the porch there,
is where we pile a lot of the gifts.
If we just have a little Santa, it's just a small space,
less square footage than this counter.
And so you don't really have to have a tree,
you can buy those little sprig trees for couple
of bucks at your craft store and make a little seam
and that's just little cotton batting there.
If you don't have room for the big Ta-Dah.
And if you go to the next one.
This is our family's guest house and it's primarily
adults there so these trees, well they're covered
with caviar and little glass ornaments that all
look like booze 'cuz that's the way all of our
adult friends spend the holidays.
But, the trick there is, or the tip I should say,
is if you have twin windows, a lot of people have two
windows that are the same in some area of their house.
Put up twin trees and have them kind of reflect each other.
It's really pretty when you're outside of the house
to see both windows lit up.
And again, if you have no space you can do Christmas
in as little as a strip of a table.
Right down the middle here we have two, we call 'em
little Charlie Brown trees, with Santa and some deer
and just some candles running around.
You know, I've used all fake trees in my house.
I love the smell of real trees.
But I tend to use fake trees because I don't have time.
I decorated Thanksgiving because I'm really not home
again until just before Christmas.
So, the trees would dry out and I can't babysit them.
I think a great tip, if you're going to use fake
trees so that you can manipulate them, is to just
bring home some sprigs, or fresh pine, or running pine
so the house smells like pine, even though your
tree is in a box and you don't have to deal with the sap.
Another tree that I love, and we have a picture
of the real one upstate.
This was a gift from my friend Jackie and we have
an amazing art department here at the show.
Delancy and Jackie, I don't know how I could
live without them.
But, they made me an Advent tree.
So, the tip here is to make your own Advent tree,
you buy one of those little craft store,
Charlie Brown trees, you spray hollow ornaments
and you fill all of these with chocolates.
And for each of the 25 days, yeah it's an Advent
tree instead of an Advent Calender.
Yay, Jackie.
(audience applause)