The Women’s Club of Exeter Township will host its 17th annual Holiday House Tour on Dec. 7 from 1 to 5 p.m. The event will raise as much as $3,000 for the Exeter Community Library, which is the primary beneficiary of charitable funds raised by the Women’s Club.
The tour will allow attendees to get a sneak peak of some of the most architecturally and historically stunning homes in the Exeter Township area. According to Women’s Club Chairman Susan Pannabecker, the house tour is a special treat for those interested in architecture and interior design alike.
The tour will begin at The Daniel Boone Homestead and will continue through five other homes located in Exeter Township. The sixth and final home is the Holiday House Tour featured house, which is owned by Cathy Melot.
Each home will have free refreshments available, courtesy of the Women’s Club. Raffle tickets will be available for attendees to purchase for the chance to win a basket, which will be raffled at the featured house.
The homes included in the tour will be decked out with many of the homeowners going the extra mile to decorate their homes for the holidays.
Melot, owner of this year’s featured house, starts creating holiday decorations for her home months before the holiday season. Melot’s home is embellished with her meticulously created wreaths and other decorations that she makes in a small workshop in her backyard.
After a busy day of work at Antietam Academy, the day care center Melot owns, she uses her creative juices to wind down. “I come home, wash up, throw old clothes on, and go out [to my workshop] with a glass of wine. That’s my sanctuary,” Melot said.
Melot’s Frank Lloyd Wright-style home was built in 1957, and has four levels that make the home seem more spacious inside than it looks from the outside. Several areas of the home were recently refinished, including the ‘chef’s dream’ kitchen that has a six-burner stove and rare Asterix granite countertops that were imported from Brazil.
Melot’s home has many decorative touches that make it sparkle all year long. A lover of Swarovski crystal, Melot has crystals hanging below a skylight in her kitchen and a modern-style light fixture in her dining room. The lights hanging above the kitchen countertops captivate the glitter in the granite brilliantly. In addition, Melot has a curio cabinet in her large sunken living room filled with crystals as well as the crystals nestled in the branches of her Christmas tree.
The highlight of Melot’s sunken living room is a white-brick fireplace with one of Melot’s many large homemade wreaths hanging above it and walls of windows that make it a bright and inviting space. Melot spent a great deal of time hot gluing deep red flowers to the wreath’s base. She said she got the idea from a catalogue that was selling a similar wreath for $600.
While the decorations in Melot’s home look very expensive, she says she gets most of the materials for her creations from dollar stores. She also reuses bases from wreaths from year to year, and she reuses as much ribbon as possible because she says ribbon is very expensive.
The five other homes included in the tour will take attendees on a journey through Berks County’s roots as well as homes that were just built in the past 20 years. The tour will begin at the Daniel Boone homestead and will continue through Carolyn Tibbets 1750 farm house, Nancy and Dewey Johnson’s cozy split-level home, Heather and Brian Renninger’s colonial home featuring an 11-foot Christmas tree, Susan and George Straub’s floral-adorned ranch home, and finally the featured home owned by Cathy Melot.
Tickets for the Holiday House Tour are available and can be purchased at the Exeter Community Library and Boscov’s East. The Women’s Club of Exeter asks that attendees refrain from using cameras and cell phones, smoking, using strollers and wearing spiked heels while touring the homes
If you are interested in being part of the Holiday House Tour next year or would like more information, contact Fran Vogt at 610-779-6506.
