Linda Graziano looks forward

to Christmas every year. This is the time

of year when she can combine her artistic

creativity and passion for decorating to bring

Christmas cheer to the Sublette Center.

“I always did garland on my door (at the

Sublette Center),” Graziano said. “Then my

next-door neighbor started putting their own

garland up, and it grew from there.”

This year, Graziano transformed the entire

Sublette Center into a winter wonderland of

lights, garland, Christmas trees, handmade

wreaths, presents with bows, Santas and snowflakes.

Ordinary hallways burst with beauty,

color and brightness. They each received a

new name, including “Candy Cane Lane,”

“Ornament Hall” and “West Snowflake

Alley.” Around every corner is a new surprise,

a wreath of poinsettias or an ice-blue stocking

with snowflakes tumbling out.

“Linda has put up decorations since I’ve

been here – about five years,” April Rose,

activities director at the Sublette Center, said.

“But she went all out this year and started

planning back in June. She has done a beautiful

job.”

For Graziano, decorating is a way she can

spread her love of Christmas to the residents

and employees at the Sublette Center with the

administration’s blessing and encouragement.

“The seniors shouldn’t be forgotten,”

Graziano said. “The (Sublette Center) office

takes care of supplies and every employee is

involved in the decorating process. It’s about

how we can help bring the Christmas spirit

here. I want it to feel like home, what we grew

up with.”

The best time of year

Graziano caught the Christmas decorating

bug at an early age.

“Christmas is my favorite holiday,” she

said. “My dad raised me like Chevy Chase

(in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation)

– ‘What do you mean we only have 7,000

lights?’ In the early 1990s, I lived in Daniel

and put up lights all over. A neighbor said,

‘You should take all those garish lights to

Vegas.’”

Linda Graziano makes beautiful

wreaths out of pinecones and other

donated items that show up at her

doorstep over the year.

Anna Peters poses with some of the

door handles she stitched together.

Clark Griswold would be impressed with

Graziano’s project, and she probably has at

least 1,000 lights up, although the decorations

are anything but “garish.” Months before

Christmas, Graziano starts to plan how she

will fill every nook and cranny of the Sublette

Center with holiday festivity. All the pieces

eventually “just fall together,” Graziano said,

resulting in a perfect arrangement of color and

light down each corridor and in the common

rooms.

Around July, supplies and boxes of decorations

start to show up at Graziano’s door. Most

of the materials are donated from the Pinedale

Community Food Basket. Other community

members also add to the pile growing inside

Graziano’s apartment. One of the cooks at

the Sublette Center gave her an entire bag of

Christmas lights this year.

“My couch was filled with bags of pinecones

for months,” she said. “We have to use

a storage room so I can live a little bit.”

Many of the wreaths filling the hallways

are Graziano’s own creations. She strips

wreath frames and then arranges materials like

painted pinecones, poinsettia flowers and juniper

branches in a pattern. Basically anything

that appears at Graziano’s door can turn into a

Christmas wreath with her creativity.

The wreaths take days to assemble, a painstaking

process done by weaving the materials

together by hand.

“I’m surprised she still has any fingers

left,” said Graziano’s daughter, Kerrie Hartley,

as Hartley climbed a ladder to hammer up

the sign for Candy Cane Lane.

Once the decorations are done and the master

plan is complete, all that is left to do is put

everything up. This is no easy task, however,

and Graziano, Hartley and other volunteers

start right after Thanksgiving.

“I came back the day after Thanksgiving,

and I was blown away with how much they

had already done,” said Rose.

A team effort and the Black Bag Society

Graziano is quick to credit others for

bringing her vision to life. Rose and the administration

at the Sublette Center lend their

encouragement and support. Employees, residents

and other volunteers pitch in.

“This is a massive project,” Graziano said.

“The teamwork – that’s what takes my breath

away.”

During warmer months when the ground

is not covered by a foot of snow, a group

of residents and family members called the

“Black Bag Society” collect pinecones. They

fill dozens of large black garbage bags with

cones from lodgepole and whitebark pines,

spruce and fir trees. Black Bag Society member

Harriet Davis showed off one of the pinecone

wreaths made out of materials she helped

gather.

Other residents in the Sublette Center

contribute their own handmade decorations.

Anna Peters showed a few samples of the door

handles that she cross-stitches. Each one has

a unique design and pattern and Peters estimated

that she stitched 30 door handles in the

course of one month.

And there is a lot of assistance available to

help Graziano figure out the best arrangement

for a decoration or to decide if an ornament

will work with what’s hanging on the walls.

“I always ask the ladies, ‘What do you

think of this or that?’” Graziano said.

Working with other residents strengthened

friendships at the Sublette Center.

“I laughed all summer long working with

the different ladies,” Graziano said. “It was a

joy to create the Black Bag Society.”

On Friday, Dec. 6, Graziano and Hartley

spent the morning and worked into lunchtime

putting additional decorations up. The beautiful

displays looked complete, but Graziano

said there was still plenty of work to do.

For Graziano, the project is all about “fun”

and the excitement on residents’ faces when

everything is in place.

“It’s magical,” Graziano said.

For anyone interested in checking out the

decorations, members of the public are welcome

to stop by, said Sublette Center Administrator

Dawn Walker. The decorations will be

up through the New Year’s holiday.