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Extreme home decorating
Hay River woman fills house with the feeling of Christmas

Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Thursday, December 2, 2010

HAY RIVER - For Elaine Bolt, decorating her home for Christmas is a passion.

NNSL photo/graphic

Elaine Bolt displays some of the Christmas decorations filling her Hay River home. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

The Hay River woman simply doesn't put up a Christmas tree and a few ornaments and lights, but virtually fills the inside of her home with decorations.

"I like all the decorations," she said. "I love decorating, like I love decorating."

Her house is a colourful and varied display of Christmas in a multitude of forms – two trees, numerous figurines, a nativity scene, Santa and Mrs. Claus in various sizes, tableware, wall hangings, rugs, wreaths and bows, and much more.

Except for bedrooms, every corner of the house is filled with Christmas spirit. That includes the bathroom.

Even the ringtone on her telephone is changed to a Christmas tune.

"My tree went up in the middle of October and then about a week after that I started with all of this stuff," she said while interviewed at her dining room table, of course covered in Christmas ornaments.

Bolt is not really sure how many decorations of different shapes and sizes she displays at Christmas.

"There are ornaments everywhere," she said. "I'd be betting a thousand, easy."

Bolt usually keeps the seasonal decorations up until mid-January, meaning her home is decked out for Christmas about three months of the year.

"I kept my tree up one year until February," she recalled. "I love my Christmas tree. It's the last thing I'll take down, because I just hate to take it down."

She always uses artificial Christmas trees because real ones would dry out long before she would be ready to take them down. As she puts it, they would start to look like Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

Christmas is the time of year when Bolt decorates most. She does some decorating for Thanksgiving, but not really for Halloween.

In fact, she finds herself wishing Halloween would hurry up and get out of the way because she is so anxious to get to Christmas.

"I'm a Christmas girl. There's no doubt," she said. "I love it."

Bolt started her extreme decorating for Christmas five or six years ago in Hay River, where she has lived for 27 years.

Nowadays, she even decorates Christmas trees of other people, mainly family members.

This year, that will mean about 11 or 12 other trees.

"I just try to come up with a different idea for every tree and every year I try to do something different," she said. "Personally, I do different colours on mine every year."

Bolt, 52, is not a decorator by trade, but works at Ring's drugstore.

Still, people occasionally call her throughout the year for decorating tips.

"I think I missed my calling," she said, adding sometimes she really thinks she should have been a decorator.

She explained she is a "moving-furniture, changing-curtains" type of person. "It just sort of comes naturally."

As for why her decorating runs wild at Christmas, Bolt said it is because she enjoys decorating and her love of Christmas is something that comes from the heart, plus it reminds her of her childhood in Newfoundland.

"I can't explain how much I love Christmas."

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