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Anticipated ornaments give taste of holiday: Des Moines Register
Linda Depue, owner of Linda's Hallmark in Urbandale, directs activities at her annual ornament release party.
People/Places
Anticipated ornaments give taste of holiday
By LAURA PIEPER
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
July 22, 2005
Christmas can come in July - if you collect Hallmark's Keepsake Ornaments .
While children crowded outside area book stores last Friday in eager anticipation of the midnight release of the latest installment of the Harry Potter series, adults gathered outside Linda's Hallmark store in Urbandale. This was the 11th annual ornament release party at Linda Depue 's store, located in the strip mall at 86th Street and Douglas Avenue.
"It's a lot of fun," Carole Fenton of Urbandale said. She has been attending the galas for the past five or six years.
"It's fun to see what (Depue) does every year. Every year is different," Fenton said.
Depue holds the parties outside of her store and opens the doors at midnight for the invited guests to examine the ornaments. She designs her own decorations and invitations, and participants are invited to dress in costume for the occasion.
This year's theme was the circus. A "big top" tent stood outside the store, along with a popcorn stand, an animal cracker "carousel," train cars filled with wild "animals," and carnival games.
Clowns entertained the guests, a gypsy told their fortunes and characters like the bearded lady and strongman led some of the games. Depue even managed to find a local troupe of belly dancers, the Veelas of the Moonlit Forest, to perform in the humid late-night darkness.
"(Depue) goes all out; she makes all this stuff," Joanne Motley of Eagle Grove said, waving a hand at the decorations.
Motley, whose son works with Depue, has made it to all but one of the release parties. This year, she came as a lion - well, tiger - tamer, complete with a stuffed tiger, a whip and a tiara.
Depue made the decorations, including the carousel and train cars, out of foam insulation, using a cutter and her imagination. She makes pins for each guest to wear. This year's were made out of real animal crackers.
"Linda can think of the darndest things," Gretchen Pope of Urbandale said.
Pope watched her friend Lois Smith attempt to pop a balloon while holding a tiger mask on her face. Smith insisted on digging through the box of pins to find a tiger to match her mask and stuffed tiger slippers.
Depue also designs the invitations, which have included themes like this year's animal cracker boxes and an ear of corn that must be "shucked" to reveal the invitation.
"It's always fun to see what the invitation looks like every year," Fenton said.
The parties began as a bet, said Depue, who this year was dressed as a ringmaster with a top hat and blinking bow tie. Hallmark used to ship the ornaments in July and would begin with the farthest ZIP codes.
Omaha would receive ornaments before Des Moines, and some Des Moines stores would get their shipments before others. It became a fight to see which stores would find a way to obtain their ornaments first.
Finally, Hallmark decided to set an official release date for the ornaments. Stores that sold the ornaments before the release date would lose their right to sell them.
Depue announced the new rule at a Keepsake Ornaments collectors' club meeting and placed the bet: "I will open at midnight if you all come in your pajamas," she told the group.
And they did.
"It was a hoot," Depue said.
She handed out marbles that year as party favors.
"(Depue) said anybody who comes to do this has lost their marbles," Motley recalled.
Local collectors earn tickets to Depue's party throughout the year. They receive points for attending club meetings, for the ornaments they purchased the year before and for participating in other activities.
That first year, Depue set an alarm clock for midnight and her guests rushed into the store to grab their ornaments. In recent years, she has allowed collectors to give her a list of which ornaments they want, and she gathers them together in gift boxes.
This year, collectors entered the store to find their ornaments stored in "popcorn" boxes.
"Cute, cute, cute," one lady said when she saw the line of boxes.
Some guests purchased their ornaments and went home, but many stayed in the store, sat cross-legged on the floor and opened their Christmas gifts.
One group of four ladies took over a corner in the back of the store to admire their choices.
"We always stake out a corner like this and look through everything," Maureen Wilson of Urbandale said.
The collectors slowly began to trickle out of the store in the early morning hours, clasping their popcorn boxes as eagerly as the children across town were hugging their Harry Potter books to their chests.
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