Holiday Shoebox: Santa Paintings, Christmas Tablecloth

New on our set this year were two wonderful pictures of Santa Claus himself. In one picture, Santa is holding up a Christmas ball ornament with HGTV printed on it and next to Santa are some packages and a tree with many ornaments. Each had a small tag that would be just the place for a name. One of our ornaments said Carol Duvall.

In the other picture, Santa was near a fireplace mantle that held several Christmas stockings. These too were personalized. Both are the work of Rose Mary Montgomery, who paints another Santa picture each year. Every picture includes not only a wonderful painting of old Santa himself, but in it are many surprise places where names can be added to personalize the painting for a specific family. Rose Mary paints the pictures in oil and has prints made. She then personalizes the prints as requested by the customer. For this she uses a fine ink pen. For information on the different pictures available, prices, etc., you may check out Rose Mary’s web site at www.santaart.com.

Also in the Shoebox were some photos sent in by Barbara Hardoerfer of Gulfport, Fla., along with the story of the holiday tablecloth. It was back in 1976 that Barbara decided to make a quilt consisting of a number of individual 12-inch squares; but by the time she finally got around to actually sewing the squares together in 1994, she decided to make a tablecloth instead of a quilt. It is charming indeed.

Each holiday season she selects one square to be the square for that year, and at the Christmas dinner, she has all those present sign their names using a dissolving ink pen. After the festivities, Barbara goes to work and embroiders all of the names.

It was fun to see how some of the signatures, especially those of the children, changed over the years. The current tablecloth has finally run out of squares, so Barbara has made another one in order to carry on the tradition.