‘It’s a bit much:’ Valparaiso house is home to 144 Christmas trees collected over 27 years
Jennie Belluomini will say out loud what most people think when they walk into her entranceway for the first time and notice the Christmas trees.
All of them, everywhere, mostly brightly lit and in just about every nook and cranny of the home she shares on the north side of Valparaiso with husband Brian, her many children and handful of cats and dogs.
“It’s a bit much when you walk in,” she said, dressed in a sparkly green vest adorned with Christmas gifts, a tiny Christmas tree dangling from each ear and a headband festooned with tiny gold, green and red balls.
She doesn’t dress that way all the time, she said later, somewhat apologetically, but volunteered at one of her kids’ schools earlier in the day.
What started as routine Christmas decorations snowballed, as Jennie calls it, into a collection of 144 trees, from 5 inches to 9 feet in height, not, as Brian joked, including her earrings. There are trees for her kids, though the ornaments for a few of those have moved out along with the children when they left home, an international tree, a religious tree, color-themed trees — you get the idea.
The Belluominis moved to Valparaiso almost three years ago from Minooka, Illinois, southwest of Joliet, for better schooling options, especially during the pandemic, and lower taxes.
They have been married for 27 years and together for 31, but their life hasn’t always been focused on adorning the interior of their home so it looks like a Christmas decoration showroom.
“When we first got married, we had one tree,” Jennie said, adding they moved and got a second one, and then a third.
“When we moved into Minooka it just grew from there,” she said, adding they lived there for 16 years. “During that time, I think it got a little out of hand.”
The couple’s seven children are ages 8 to 27, though the oldest daughters have moved out. Each gets an ornament every year representing a memory of the previous months and when they move out, they have a starter kit for a new tree.
That, too, has necessitated more trees, as the ornaments grew with the number of children and each year as they collected more ornaments.
The family had around 110 trees when they moved to Valparaiso, so the collecting didn’t stop when they moved, though Jennie said she only purchased one new tree this year, a lit palm tree in the entranceway that’s not decorated and is a nod to two cruises this year to warmer climes.
“I would have gotten a second one but Brian said to simmer down,” Jennie said with the easy laugh she and Brian share over their collective collections, which also include a Christmas village, Santas, snowmen, annual Christmas bears and angels.
Jennie likes to play a game with Brian and get a new tree and see how long he takes to notice, which ranges from a few days to three weeks.
“It’s a fun game. We’ve been married a long time,” she said.
There are 33 trees — wait, that’s 34, no, 35 — in the living room alone, the most densely forested room in the house. Most of them are lit, save for a felt one on a small table and a few others, making that room noticeably warmer than the rest of the house.
“The benefit is that the furnace barely kicks on because the lights keep the house warm,” Brian said.
From memories of their kids to trips they’ve taken and special moments in their lives, and even the other collections they’ve amassed, including a Nativity scene Jennie bought when their oldest, Emily, was 1, “There’s a lot of meaningful things here,” Brian said.
Jennie and Brian have no idea what all the trees and lights do to their electric bill from late November through mid-January because they’re on the budget plan with Northern Indiana Public Service Co., so their bill is the same each month, which Brian said might be for the best.
The family’s new home is more than twice as large as their old one in Minooka, which makes displaying all those trees much easier.
“One year, we took all the furniture out in our living room,” Jennie said of the family’s old home.
“It was like a Christmas tree forest,” added Brian.
A forest, that is, with a downside. With no room for furniture, the family was forced to sit on the floor.
It’s also a forest that takes considerable setup, one that has morphed and gotten more organized as the number of trees continues to grow.
Trees typically begin sprouting around the house the day after Thanksgiving but the Belluominis began a week early this year. The work usually lasts two weeks, though it stretched to more than three weeks this year because Jennie was working part-time.
The tree decorating is a family affair, though Jennie does the rest of the decorating while the kids are in school as well as anything deemed too fragile.
Over the years, both kids and cats have knocked over trees, though both have settled down over time and Jennie is learning to relax at least a bit about the decorating when the kids help.
“This year I didn’t rearrange all of the ornaments,” Jennie said. “I’m very proud of myself.”
Most of the trees are pre-lit, cutting down on the number of cords on the floor, and they’re set on timers that come on at 2:16 p.m. and shut off at 11 p.m. so the family doesn’t have to scurry around turning the trees on and off individually.
Brian handles any tripped circuits, particularly in the living room, and always has the goal of getting everything done by his birthday on Dec. 10 and the couple’s anniversary, which is Dec. 14.
Teardown starts after Epiphany on Jan. 6 and also takes two or three weeks. The Belluominis take pictures of the trees and decorations so they know what goes where and everything goes in labeled storage containers before being placed on shelves in the home’s large crawl space.
“We have all the boxes saved for the trees and they’re all labeled with what tree it is and what room,” Brian said, adding he sends his school-age sons into the crawl space to bring out the boxes in phases when they get started with the decorating.
“There were years where it was bad because we had the kids put things away” and nothing was labeled, Brian said.
One year in Minooka, Jennie added, they took everything out at once and blocked the front door with boxes.
“It’s better now since it seems more in control and we have a plan,” Brian said. “The whole moving process forced us to get organized.’
The exterior of their red brick home is far more sedate, with a gently lit Nativity scene, a bough with lights around the front door and a smattering of lights on the trees and bushes.
The outside, the couple said, is Brian’s deal.
“We spend more time on the inside than the outside,” he said.
Even when the lights, the shiny ornaments, the smiling Santas and snowmen, and excitement of Christmas are long gone, Jennie keeps the season’s spirit strong.
In February, she got a Christmas tree tattoo on her forearm. She does not count it as one of her trees.
“I’m always festive,” she said.
