All decked out for the Holiday Home Tour

TILLSONBURG-

Saturday's Holiday Tour of Homes, presented by the Tillsonburg Kinette Club and Tillsonburg Station Arts Centre, featured six Tillsonburg homes, including three Broadway residences.

Also on the tour was Station Arts Centre on Bridge Street with its seasonally-decorated Tea Room, and the town's three-story crown jewel, Annandale National Historic Site, on Tillson Avenue.

Participants were provided with a map on their tickets, and they could visit the eight locations in any order. At each location tickets were initialed to be eligible for draw prizes.

No. 1 on the list was the Broadway home of Jennifer Schum and David Rudolph, owners of a stately century house originally built in 1908 by the Brown family. Visitors were greeted by two large Nutcracker soldiers 'posted' out front, and holiday music both inside and outside. Inside, the home's main hall, dining room, living room and family room were seasonally decorated using a variety of vintage-theme Christmas decorations and children-friendly ornaments.

"The music outside's just for today I wanted to liven it up," said Schum, standing under a string of musically chiming bells at the dining room entrance. "Everything in here right now is what we typically do for Christmas. If you come here in January, it'll still be the same."

Their 'show-stopper' was a set of three dancing pandas from an old mall display which Schum had found on Kijiji. The last owner, who had bought them at an auction, had not used them in a dozen or more years. The wiring had been cut, but Rudolph was able to re-wire them and fire them up for the first time about a week before the home tour.

"The panda bears and the Ferris wheel the Ferris wheel is off right now that's upstairs normally," said Schum. "We do kind of a kid's theme Candyland upstairs. We've got young children, so we try to make all of our holidays really quite special for the kids. Holidays have always been quite a big production for us and we love Christmas."

They started collecting the larger pieces since moving into the Broadway home seven years ago.

"The three larger Nutcracker soldiers and the pandas wouldn't fit in our last house."

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All decked out for the Holiday Home Tour