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Bonsall home features 23 trees

Twenty-three Christmas trees. No, it's not the title of the latest Christmas movie airing repeatedly on the Hallmark Channel, but rather the number of trees a Bonsall woman puts up in her home for the holidays.

Sylvia Colton loves Christmas, which is why her house resembles the fanciest department store's holiday window display. Decorative wreathes and beautiful ribbons, a Santa Claus everywhere you look, holiday figurines, nativity scenes, nutcrackers, a train circling a Christmas village, and staircase rails wrapped with a poinsettia-garland.

Those decorations serve as the backdrop for Colton's in-house Christmas tree farm, which features trees decorated in a variety of themes. Upon entering the hilltop home guests are greeted by her "Mardi Gras" tree, which is bejeweled in only gold, purple and green and features beads that Colton obtained while attending a Fat Tuesday celebration in New Orleans.

When a visitor asked Colton if she had to work for those Mardi Gras beads, she replied with a laugh, "Yeah, I did."

Colton is a retired nursing home administrator who has a personality as bubbly as a glass of holiday champagne. She started collecting Christmas trees after her son, Michael Hefner, asked her to retire and move with him to Bonsall in 2007.

"I moved from Monrovia, and my house there was small and I could only collect Santas," said Colton, who has hosted a holiday open house for friends since the 1990s. "With this big house, my decorations weren't enough."

Colton – to take advantage of sale prices – shops the day after Christmas and has purchased at least one tree every year since moving to Bonsall. However, that streak may be in jeopardy.

"I don't know if we have any more room" said Colton. "The storage is our problem."

Storage figures to be a problem when you own nearly two dozen Christmas trees and all the ornaments and decorations that go with them. And putting up and taking down the inventory is also no easy task.

"It takes me a month to put everything up," said Colton. "Luckily, my son likes to decorate as much as I do and he got me organized. We do it by color code. All the bins are color coded for each room, or labeled as entry way, great room or kitchen. Before it used to take me almost two months."

The results of the labor are spectacular trees that feature themes. Highlights of Colton's Christmas tree collection include: an "Angel" tree (beautifully-decorated with gold ornaments and white doves), a "Manikin" tree (dressed in garland, red and silver bulbs, a silver top, and a red hat and boa), and an "Elf" tree (decorated with whimsical elves, including one elf who apparently had too much eggnog and fell into the tree – only his legs can be seen).

Other trees include a "Norman Rockwell" tree (decorated with ornaments featuring Rockwell paintings and cover illustrations), a "Travel" tree (adorned with ornaments that Colton amassed during travel in the U.S. and abroad), an "Interracial" tree (featuring figurines of different colors), and a 13-foot "Rainbow" tree (decorated with bulbs featuring the colors of a rainbow).

The tree list also includes a "Blue" tree (decorated all in blue), a "Red and Gold" tree (only red and gold bulbs allowed), a "Little Bear" tree (little bears are everywhere), a "Gift Box" tree (tiny packages serve as ornaments) and the annoying (for Colton) "Toy" tree (decorated with too-many-to-count small ornaments).

"This is the one I hate to do because they’re all little ornaments, a lot of Disney characters and toy things," said Colton of her Toy tree. "This takes me the longest because there are so many ornaments. It takes me two days because I get irritated at it. After I put everything up, I go around and tweak it."

Colton's collections also includes three "Santa" trees (one big one and two small ones), a small "Angel" tree to go along with her big one, two "Dove" trees, a "Waterford" tree (all Waterford ornaments), a "Gingerbread" tree, a "Girl" tree (decorated with all girl ornaments) and an "Apple" tree ("apples were popular on the tree in the 1980s," said Colton).

The decorations and trees ­– which range from two-feet to 13-feet tall, with the more elaborate trees being on the taller side – go up in time for Colton to host her annual holiday open house at the beginning of December and remain in place through Jan. 6, Epiphany (Three Kings' Day).

"It takes us about three weeks to put things away," said Colton. "By that time, you know, you just want to squish 'em in there."

Colton said she doesn't get sad when she's taking down the decorations but admits there is a void once the job is completed.

"When I’m doing it, it’s OK," said Colton. "But afterwards, when I look around, it takes me awhile to calm down because the house is so empty."

With Colton's persona, that Bonsall home will never be empty.

 

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