&'Tis the season

For many elders, being near their children is their heart's desire, particularly during the holidays.

Kirk and Pat Veale, however, just might have set some kind of record for achieving the dream. Not only are all four of their adult children living in Santa Rosa. All of them live almost within hollering distance - in Bennett Valley.

Even more remarkable, four of the six adult grandchildren and three great-grandchildren also live in Bennett Valley. The other two grandchildren live in Sonoma County.

In 2010, it's an impossibly quaint notion that four generations of a single family could live within the same neighborhood. But it makes for jolly holidays when the extended clan gathers at the Mediterranean-style perch Kirk and Pat created four years ago on a ridge at the edge of Santa Rosa.

The house has broad and open terraces that invite easy outdoor living. It is dressed for Thanksgiving with arrangements that suggest the season and the North Coast landscape. But before the turkey is even served, parts of the 8,000-square-foot home will look a lot like Christmas.

A team of 17 interior designers and design students from Santa Rosa Junior College will help the Veales get a jump-start on the holidays by decking the halls for a Design Showcase that will raise money for the Junior League of Napa-Sonoma. The public can visit the Veales and another Bennett Valley home Nov. 20 and 21, seeing how different designers might do things up for the back-to-back season of thanks and giving.

"You can see what interior designers can bring to the holiday decor and probably come away with a lot of fun new ideas," said Nancy Cooper, a kitchen designer who is doing a downstairs powder room.

Every room in the Veale house will get special treatment, including places that often are overlooked but still deserve a serving of Christmas cheer.

Jennifer Austin of RJ Austin Interior Design will tackle the Veale's wine cellar with a display that dresses up a wine area without introducing plants or perfumed candles that could compete with the aroma of the wine.

Austin believes that decorations should also be kept casual in this kind of setting where function should always come before aesthetics, she said.

For people who like to troll for ideas, the Design Showcase will be a good opportunity to see how professional designers handle those treasured Christmas collections that confound you with their sheer volume.

Austin will do up the wine cellar with her hand-made Santa Claus collection. Cooper is bringing her collection of Nisse figures, mythical little Danish men thought to protect farm and family during dark winter nights.

"They get very restless during the holidays, and they can play tricks," said Cooper with a figurative wink. She has collected them for 30 years and usually display them on her dining room table. For the showcase, they will adorn a table outside the powder room.

Bathrooms are frequently forgotten in the rush to decorate for Christmas. But Cooper says decorative hand towels and a scented candle do wonders to extend the holiday feeling into the washroom. She plans to add a whimsical note with a decorated twig, sort of like Charlie Brown's forlorn Christmas tree.

While professionals polish up the house for the holidays, the Veales still have Thanksgiving to prepare for.

The center of the festivities, usually held the weekend after Thanksgiving to permit their kids to feast with in-laws, is their Tuscan-style home. It was designed by Jerold Tierney and Randy Figueiredo with a large informal kitchen and dining room suitable for the family's casual get-togethers.

The couple selected this acreage overlooking Bennett Valley because of its ideal micro-climate, cooler than Sonoma and Healdsburg in summer and slightly warmer in winter.

Kirk is a real estate investor and community leader who was raised in Rincon Valley and years ago ran a family Volkswagen dealership. He and Pat will celebrate their 25th anniversary at Thanksgiving.

The couple lived in various parts of the county including Wikiup and Bodega Bay, but they wanted to be close to their children and grandchildren, shopping and hospitals.

Kirk describes this property as "a real love story" and himself as a man who, "madly in love with the woman of his life," wanted to build her a "home of her dreams ... for family and friends to enjoy."

For Thanksgiving's full house, the couple keeps the feast simple. Instead of a formal sit-down meal, it is pot-luck, with each household in the extended clan contributing a dish. Pat sets up the dining table as a buffet arrayed before panoramic windows.

She starts about a week before the holiday, giving herself plenty of time to add to the arrangements. Her centerpiece is usually something like a candelabra or candles and pumpkins and gourds dancing down the middle of the table with white serving dishes around them.

"White just goes with everything and makes the food look so much better," she said. "The food is the accent." said Pat, who also loves to do arrangements, creating things in her own crafts room downstairs.

To keep the work down and free up time for conviviality, she confesses to using disposable plates in beautiful seasonal patterns from Sincerely Yours in Montgomery Village. She sets them up in festively decorated baskets, with tableware wrapped in fine linen and tied with a bow.

There is no formal seating. Family members fan out along the island and in the living room, and even in the game room at the pool table.

"By not having to sit down formally," says Pat, "everyone can take their time and not have to worry about finishing with everyone else. That way they can enjoy every morsel."

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com or 521-5204.