A tour of Marin’s fun holiday-themed storefronts
When the independent shops along Marin’s main streets get dressed up in their various holiday styles, the cheerful efforts make the season a little sweeter.
It takes imagination, time, work and often money to create their personal gifts to all of us, so you should take a moment to appreciate all of the details, and perhaps walk away with some inspiration for your own holiday decorating.
Glitz and glam
This year, Alex Beritzhoff has filled the three large picture windows of Folio, her downtown Larkspur stationery and gift store, with large-scale embellishments — giant nutcrackers, pinecones, ornaments and crowns, all in a shimmer of gold and white with a few pops of color thrown in for accents.
Her inspiration came when she was at a gift show in Atlanta earlier this year.
“In one of my manufacturer’s showrooms, I saw this fabulous 8-foot-tall nutcracker,” she says. “I just had to have it and some of his smaller friends.”
As she unpacked it, she knew she wanted to have a “Nutcracker” ballet-themed window.
Beritzhoff has been decorating the windows of Folio for 28 years, first as an employee and for the last eight years, as the owner.
“Every year is a new theme,” she says. “Every year, I have two fabulous friends who are professional visual merchandisers, who have worked their magic at Gump’s and Williams Sonoma, among other stores, who install my holiday window.”
“I buy the merchandise and they make it look beautiful,” she adds.
It generally takes “one very long day” to do it but they also “beautify the interior of the store as well. You should see the gorgeous wreath they did.”
Chic looks
Polly Know, owner of Fairfax Variety in downtown Fairfax, has been decorating her shop’s two windows for almost 23 years and says this year’s “shiny window was not what I planned at all.”
Every year, she dresses up the two windows that flank her main entrance.
The left window is always the “traditional window,” the one with the popular, classic wooden toys, and the right one is always the “elegant” one. That is, until COVID hit.
At that point, she says, “cookbooks were flying out of here, so it became the ‘cookbook window.’”
This year, she started decorating the “cookbook” window, but fate had a different plan, as she started by adding some pre-lit trees that had bare branches.
“Then, I put in the shiny birds, and hung more birds, and a chandelier, and hanging gems until I realized there was no room for cookbooks, so I just kept going,” she says. “I’ve gotten more compliments with that window.”
Now, the window is an understated but shimmery nod to nature with gold and white colors, charming owls in various sizes, silvered nutcrackers and towers of packaged white and gold Christmas crackers.
Belinda Wickwire Jewelry, in San Anselmo, also went for a rich silvery and golden look with a gold side table topped with glistening silver and glassware.
To the side of this setting, and facing the front window, a silver garland is wrapped around a silver-and-gold-garbed nutcracker that stands in front of a silver tree with silver and gold pinecone ornaments.
A vintage teddy bear reclines quietly against a large silver ornament and a silver-and-cream- colored accent chair, perhaps waiting for its owner to pick it up and for the party to start.
The windows of Buttercup Home, a home décor shop in Novato that offers design and home styling, offers its take on a winter wonderland featuring soft, fluffy wildlife in cream and beiges, punctuated by the orange beaks of a gaggle of sassy geese.
The serene scene where these gentle stuffed animals have gathered is on poufy, almost cloud-like “snow” with small, glittery “pearl”-encrusted trees, to hint at a woodland setting.
Giant white cutout snowflakes dangle brightly overhead the enchanting menagerie of deer, fox, rabbits and a pair of life-sized sheep.
Inflatables
Inflatables are pretty popular these days, and some displays are really done rather nicely.
HenHouse Brewing in Novato, for example, has a family of snow people, Santa and his gift-filled sleigh with reindeer in harness atop its roof.
When it comes to over-the-top inflatables done in a wonderful way, the award (if there was one, and I think there should be) would go to Shampooch, a dog grooming salon in Sausalito.
It’s an exuberant garden of inflatable dogs in various shapes, sizes, colors, breeds and expressions. There are dogs in an inflatable wagon, some sitting on an inflatable bed, dogs hanging from the roof with inflatable candy canes in their mouths and others peeking from behind the greenery.
Neila Trujillo, the daughter of shop owner Carlos Trujillo, who also works as his receptionist, says the display started two years ago with an inflatable dog purchased at the Home Depot in San Rafael.
It grew a little the next year but “wasn’t as big as this year’s,” she says.
This year, he also added strings of lights to the existing trees and “the whole Shampooch team helped put up the display.”
The inflation and deflation is controlled by an app, with the dogs rising in the morning about 8 a.m. and “going to sleep” late at night.
Clients and tourists alike “peek in the shop to say they love the decorations,” she says. “We might add more next year, if we have any space.”
Window painting
Graphic artist Dominic Gelardi remembers how much he enjoyed all the Christmas scenes painted on store windows he used to see all over Novato when he was growing up.
So, the day after Thanksgiving, when he noticed the blank windows of his employer, Marin Color Service in Novato, the 21-year-old suggested painting what would become his first window, using cans of “mistake” paint stashed under the front counter.
“The house paint was all the Christmas colors — blue, red, green and white,” he says. “I came up with the design of a Santa holding a paintbrush and a snowman holding a paint roller and bucket. There are no stencils, you just use all of your skills.”
Soon, he got a request from Sentimental Journey Antiques down the street to paint its windows, and then from Buck’s Saw Service next door, followed by Trailhead restaurant in San Marin and soon, Italian Delite in Novato.
Now, Gelardi (415-246-3917) is doing window painting as a side business, charging $70 per 10 square feet.
On a rainy day this week, he was busy painting the windows and garage glass of a local home with Frosty the Snowman, reindeer and, because it’s a ranch house, horses and cows.
“I’ve learned that it’s easier to clean up than most people think,” he says. “You just use water and a razor blade. It doesn’t hurt the window.”
He says he’s happy to do the work for everybody.
“It’s fun,” he says.
It must be fun for customers, too, he thinks. “They’ll watch and ask if I can add Rudolph or another elf and I always say yes.”
For a painted window in Larkspur, look for the Left Bank restaurant, where holly and berries, snowy swirls and Santa in his sleigh led by a single buck adorn its windows.
Show off
If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.
Please send an email describing either one (or both), what you love most about it, and a photograph or two. I will post the very best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.
PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.