 Hi, I'm Travis Gross, the executive director here at the Sheboydon County Historical Museum. I'd like to welcome you to this year's Holiday Memories exhibit. The title of it is Christmas and Candy Land. So it's a unique and different take on the old Prangie windows. We actually are incorporating several of the holidays throughout the year that involve candy. You will see some exciting and new exhibits and should be a good time. A lot of animation this year. So enjoy the show. The tradition of the holiday windows here in Sheboydon started with the HC Prangie Company on the corner of 8th and Wisconsin. Probably as early as the 1920s they were decorating their front display windows with different holiday scenes featuring animated pieces. The museum was lucky enough to acquire some of these pieces beginning in 2001 and a new tradition was started with having some of these items displayed in scenes here at the museum. Visitors to this year's Holiday Memories are greeted at the bottom of the stairs when they come in with a reproduction of one of those scenes. One of the front display windows of the HC Prangie Company. This year the scene features Santa and Mrs. Claus. Along with some deer and a professional photographer taking their picture. Along with visitors looking in from outside on the beloved window displays. The photographer can take a picture with the help of visitors as well. They will come in. They hold down this red button. The flash goes off and up pops Santa and Mrs. Claus picture. Here we've entered into Christmas in Candyland, which is the theme of our main portion of the display featuring the Prangie's animation. All of this was envisioned by our lead elf this year, Bernie Markovich, and he was kind of our head designer. And what you see is all of the major Candy Holidays starting with Valentine's Day. Now to put these displays together, it takes a huge contingent of volunteers who give selflessly of their time and their talents. From Bernie with his design skills, then moving into those that help us make sure the animation is up and running, including Dan Worth and Jim Lady this year, who were able to help us keep and work on the animation, build the platforms to hold them, along with staff who also assist with countless hours. Additional people come in to help with putting the displays together. You can see in the Easter exhibit that there's a ton of flowers that ended up being put in. In the Valentine's Day exhibit, there's a ton of flowers that ended up being put in. All of these volunteers contribute their time and their talents to help bring these displays together in about three weeks, even though we spend most of the year working and planning for them prior to us getting started. Some of these materials that we use, obviously each area has a Christmas tree, because it is Christmas in Candyland. Then a lot of the other materials are either pieces that we design and produce here, or we're able to use through resources and volunteers. For example, a number of these large candy jar pieces and the trees are actually made out of foam. The large candy jars, the foam was donated by Plymouth Foam. We cut out the designs here, and then they actually are painted over at RCS in Sheboygan. Many of the flowers actually were brought in by Bernie from the supplies that he had and were able to use. Other volunteers have also helped over the years with some of the pieces that we've been able to reuse this year. For example, we've been able to reuse these foam Christmas trees, along with some of the small houses that were designed by John Pazowicz in years past. Another major thing that one of our volunteers do actually a couple is help us with the animation when it needs to be redressed. A lot of these pieces are from the 40s, 50s and 60s, and years of use and display sometimes mean that they're showing their age. In addition to being able to work on the motors and the mechanics, sometimes pieces need to have a little bit of freshening up for their outfits. And you see in the Easter scene a number of the bunnies this year got new clothes, along with pieces in the Halloween scene this year that needed to have costumes made for them to go over their regular clothing to fit with what Christmas and Candy Land for those that live in the Halloween neighborhood might look like. One of the features of the Holiday Memories exhibit is displayed by the Lakeshore Miniature Club. The club was formed over 30 years ago and has the purpose of sharing and enjoying the hobby of dollhouse miniature making. They are enthusiastic members of the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts, which links them to other groups across the country. The Lakeshore Miniature Club meets on the third Saturday of each month at the Sheboygan Falls Library at 9 a.m., except during the summer months of June, July, and August. They're more than happy to welcome guests to come and enjoy the creativity and good fellowship, and they'll help you out with trying your hand at making these miniatures. If you're interested in more information, you can come here to the museum. There's usually someone here on the weekend working on different projects. Otherwise, you can also call Elaine at 452-4798. Of course, one of the largest holidays for Christmas and Candy Land is Christmas. And the display that you see here is actually part of one of the earliest sets that we purchased here at the Museum of the Displays. Our first 45 pieces came from the Yonkers Store in downtown Sheboygan. But beginning in 2003, the museum was able to acquire a number of additional pieces from Georgia Rankin, who was running a small museum known as Collector's Showcase up in Sturgeon Bay. She had actively pursued pieces from Prangies when they stopped doing window displays in the 1970s and had many of them on display. This peppermint forest construction set actually has had a great deal of restoration done to it, and when it first came in, it needed some cleaning up and a number of the pieces needed to have some new clothing put on. And in the course of doing the cleaning, we were able to contact the David Hamburger Company, which was the original maker of this set of pieces. The majority of pieces here at the museum were either made by that company or the Sylvesterie Art Company in Chicago. And interestingly enough, we learned that when this set was first made, likely in the 1960s, the glitter was actually done with crushed glass, as opposed to the plasticized glitter that we use today. And so here you see a great deal of work being done, transporting the different candies and the different goodies that will be needed for the Christmas celebration. Along with the typical preparations that are going on for the holidays. So of course there is a story that goes with Christmas and Candyland, and here we see the final piece of that puzzle. Santa standing here in his castle looking out on all over Candyland and all the hard work that has been going on. Candyland has been ready for weeks, needing only a few last-minute tweaks. Listen carefully, you might hear Santa call. Merry Christmas and happy New Year to all. The final piece of our display from Prangies is actually the original nativity that was on display there. Typically the company would take their central windows and on Christmas Eve it would be transformed with several of these pieces that are a traditional crush scene. Over the years this scene was displayed year after year after year on that downtown corner. And we're excited because after this season the pieces are actually going to be going to objects conservator Megan Mackie who lives down in the Madison area to have some conservation work done to ensure their long-term stability. Thanks in part to some generous donations that we've received from Dan Merkel and Festival Foods. We'll be having some paint improvements and some repairs. Several pieces that have cracks will be having those repaired to stabilize them. And then eventually we'll also be having new storage crates made with all of those years of display and then also potentially having been exposed to water during the water main break. It actually is amazing that they are in as good of shape as they're still in but we're excited that they will be even better next year for our holiday memories exhibit. Every year we also have several Christmas trees on display that are decorated by local school groups whether it be elementary schools or activity groups. This tree here was done by the students in grades 3k through 8 from St. Elizabeth and Seton Elementary School. They created different ornaments based on the inspiration from the Bible verse for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. All the symbols are related to Jesus, a gift that keeps giving. All the groups were given the overall theme of the gifts of Christmas and then they were able to take that and turn it into their very own and create ornaments and a display for their trees. This year Bethlehem Luther and elementary school students in grades K through 4 chose music as their gift of Christmas. They wanted to focus on a single gift and the gift of music was chosen because the season is rich with music that we only hear at this time of year. The ornaments on the tree were made by the very creative use of old hymnals. This tree was done by the 3k, 4k and 5k students at Trinity Lutheran Elementary School as part of a class project. The ornaments are based on the books My Christmas Story by Crystal Bowman and We Believe in Christmas by Karen Kingsbury. The theme is God's Perfect Gift of Love. St. John's Lutheran School in Plymouth chose the colors of Christmas. The true gift of Christmas to us is the birth of Jesus Christ and each color on their ornaments represents a gift that we received because of Jesus' birth. These ornaments were made in the third grade classroom and they help express the idea that color is actually a gift that we often fail to appreciate. The Sheboygan County 4-H llama and alpaca project is the one that decorated this tree with the tradition of homemade ornaments. The llama project members in grades 5 through 12 incorporated llama and alpaca shapes in their ornaments, some of which are made out of llama fiber. Homemade ornaments are a tradition in many families but few probably have ornaments made out of llama fiber. Students in kindergarten through third grade made the ornaments seen here on the Jackson Elementary School tree the Gifts of Christmas. The entire school along with many parents and grandparents attended the decorating event where students put ornaments on the tree and sang Christmas carols. Our front lobby tree this year is Lake Country Academies, the simple Gifts of Christmas, with ornaments made by their Girl Scout troop of children in kindergarten through eighth grade. The Gifts of Christmas can be very simple, taking the time to enjoy the things around all year long. And this group took unusual materials and made ornaments out of them during a lunchtime ornament making session so that each girl could be sure to participate. Ornaments ranged in difficulty for the different grade levels. So we also decorate both the Taylor House and the Log House during the holiday season. And here we're in the Taylor House where the theme, the Gifts of Christmas, continues into the decorations that are spread throughout the house. We're always thankful to our large contingent of volunteers that work with these different projects. And in the Taylor House, these beautiful decorations couldn't be done without the help of the Ivy League and the Lakeshore Garden Clubs, whose members come on a Monday morning for three to four hours and under the direction of Bernie Markovich, put up all of these wonderful decorations. We close out this visit to our 2013 Holiday Memories exhibit with a tune for you on our Miller Player Piano.