Christmas gone wild with Marcella Cascini

By Rebecca Teagarden

photographed by Ellen M. Banner

MARCELLA CASCINI is a shopaholic, and she's played one on TV.
"I was quite the shopaholic — on a soap opera," the former actress and model offers up cheerfully.
The experience comes in handy when you are now, as an interior designer, a professional shopper and Christmas is, by far, your favorite holiday.
"I have a European background, and this whole idea of having something in each room comes from that," Marcella says, standing before the Mardi Gras Tree filled with feathery masks. "I feel Christmas should be a holiday journey."
It is quite the trip among the rooms of the spacious home Marcella shares with her husband, attorney Wade Cascini, just off the 10th green of Sahalee Country Club. From the Christmas bells on the front door to the bouncy ripstop nylon snowman in the billiards room downstairs, there is something for everyone someplace. And everyplace.
"It's a little sentimental journey about your family and friends, and sometimes about those who are no longer with us," says Marcella, who dresses up even the bathroom vanities in greenery.
"My husband, who's very supportive, hates that because he's always pricking his fingers," she says.
Marcella's secret is to work with the items already in her home, creating vignettes that go with. This can be quite the trick among décor that includes elephants, giraffes and animal-print pillows and throws. A bowl of fruit displayed on a hallway chest, for example, is woven in greenery and white lights.

"White lights; that's the staple," says Marcella, of Interior Staging and Design, explaining the twinkling tie that binds from room to room to room. This highway of sparkle ends at a wine cellar that, with so many items handsomely displayed, looks like a retail store.
We have not yet even discussed the Santas. "I have Santas from all over the world — from 2 feet to 7," she says. We are standing in front of the fireplace before a massively jolly fellow snagged at Costco one year.
"My friends say, 'How do you do it? Do you drink?" Marcella laughs. "I do drink a lot of coffee. And sometimes coffee with a bit of Bailey's."
But the key, she says, is to take your time (start a few days before Thanksgiving) and "the big thing is to enjoy it if you can."
We forego discussion of the Far East Tree in the dining room to focus on what looks like an old-growth artificial tree in the media room. It is so fat and grand. Bedecked in bronze and brown and gold, draped in strands of pearls. Flocked in feathers and gold leaves and apples. Topped by an angel and a star.
Standing nearby is another Santa: known as The Santa from the Woods. "My little people. I'm very attached to them," Marcella says. "This may sound a little nuts, but I give them a little hug when I take them out of the box every year."

Decorating is Marcella's department, but Christmas dinner is all Wade.
"We do a big Italian dinner," Marcella says, visions of homemade meatballs dancing in her head. "Wade makes it all by hand. We have veal parmigiana, pasta, gnocchi, meatballs, sauce."
Diners are each provided with a funny Christmas hat that they must wear to the meal. Lighted trees, Dr. Seussy gold spirals, reindeer antlers. No exceptions. They are then gifts to be taken home.
In fact, everybody Marcella knows is remembered at Christmas. The dentist, the doctor, the paper guy. "Last year I had to chase down the garbage man," she says.
"I know a lot of it is silly," Marcella says. "But this all creates memories. I like that."