40% off all Century furniture.  |  We're hiring! View positions & apply >

Mary makes the White House merry

Posted on December 17th, 2015 by Toms Price Home.

At Toms-Price, we’re known for our beautiful furniture and creating dazzling home interiors. But who would have guessed that one of our employees would help to make the White House merry for the holidays!?

Mary makes White House merry

This year, our own Mary Mazzeffi, display artist at Toms-Price in Wheaton, made the cut to be one of 89 volunteers from 35 states picked to help hang ornaments, trim garlands and do other duties involved in decorating to make the White House merry for Christmas. Thousands of people had applied for the coveted positions. Cathy Manock, Wheaton Toms-Price store manager, said, “What Mary does with design at Toms-Price is fabulous. She sees every detail and works on our room displays with so much energy.”

Mary began applying to be a volunteer about six years ago. “When I got the acceptance letter in October, I couldn’t believe it was finally going to happen!”

Mary loves Christmas so much, she brought her own miniature 8-inch Christmas tree from home to keep in her hotel room while she was in Washington. It was her first visit to the White House.

Over 68,000 visitors are expected to visit the White House during the holiday season. There are 62 trees and over 70,000 ornaments to hang throughout the White House. Three of the rooms were designed by top fashion designers, including Carolina Herrera.

Ornament Garland

Mary’s name is featured in the official White House press release “2015 White House Holidays—A Timeless Tradition.” Among her duties were to decorate the East Wing Hallway, where she hand-glued 5,000 ornaments to displays. She spent a day and a half on a scaffold in the East Room where she adorned the inside arch with fresh balsam garland and covered it with silver ornaments, which were all hand-wired. Mary also helped hang intricately cut snowflakes made by children from local schools. Each child wrote on a snowflake what he or she wants to be when they grow up.

Snowflakes above Hallway

Mary was also told a three-foot tall tree she decorated was bound for the president’s private elevator.

In addition to spending five days decorating and making the White House merry, she was one of 11 volunteers chosen to stay an extra day for an event where she met with the 150 members of the press and greeted military families.

There were other bonuses to Mary’s experience too, including: being selected to be part of Google’s 360 virtual tour of the White House decorations, snagging a private tour of the White House flower shop, and meeting the White House dogs Bo and Sunny. The volunteers were also treated to lunch each day provided by the official White House kitchen staff. The lunch included “phenomenal pastries.”

"Live For Books Display" in Library

Jewel-tone book decorations

Since she’s been home, Mary has become quite a celebrity. Her story of decking out the White House for the holidays has appeared in numerous publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Herald News and Orlando Sentinel and was covered by Fox 32 TV News, NBC TV News as well as WBBM and WGN radio stations. She even got a call from a newspaper in Greece who printed her story in the Greek language. Mary is a second generation Greek-American.

“It was so exciting, so overwhelming that I was there. A dream come true!” said Mary. “It’s definitely something to cross off my bucket list. Being part of history, touching history, you can’t help get teary-eyed. Who gets to do that!?”

 

Sunny and Bo

The first family’s pets, two Portuguese water dogs, have a special display. It features something that just might be on their list for Santa – tennis balls! Over-sized replicas of Sunny and Bo have been knitted and assembled with yarn.

Sunny and Bo display

Tennis ball tree

Tennis ball wreath

Save

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2015 at 6:18 pm and is filed under decorating, holiday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

Comments are closed.