Gracie Mansion is one of the city’s most classically well-appointed abodes. The official residence of New York’s Mayor, the Yorkville home dates back to 1799, and boasts some pretty impressive bones. So, as one would imagine, some cheap string lights and a sidewalk Christmas tree just aren’t going to cut it come December.

Looking to add some holiday flair to his historical halls, Mayor Bill de Blasio enlisted Rafanelli Events to bring on the merry. And bring it, they did.

Working with this year’s design theme of “togetherness,” Rafanelli Events brilliantly  played upon the significance of ribbons – a universal symbol of awareness and a material used to tie things together. Transforming an otherwise common décor piece into a beautiful tribute to the way in which New York breaks down borders, unifies families, communities, cultures and more.

Scroll through for an inside look at the colorful Christmas scene. We trust you’ll be tossing your ornaments for ribbons in no time!

Written by: Christie Grimm

” What do the Holidays mean to you, and what should they mean to the world.”

We are thrilled to have Laura Bounin join us this Holiday Season….. Laura grew up in Paris and attended the prestigious boarding School, Le Rosey. She is currently studying at Regents University in London for a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations and Journalism. She speaks and writes three fluent languages …French, Romanian and English. In the Springtime she will be graduating, year 2016. We here at Old Fashioned Mom Magazine are proud to introduce Laura Bounin!

Ah! It is that time of the year, the Christmas bells are ringing, you can smell the flavor of the Christmas Turkey and admire the marvelous presents underneath the Christmas tree, though it is not the time to open them just yet…

As the Christmas Holidays are approaching it is a great time of year to be next to your loved ones and enjoy quality moments, as there is nothing more important than family traditions! It is also a great time for you to invest more in yourself and to start doing all these little things you never made time for throughout the year. Holidays are the chance for you to finally go out of your daily routine. Go ahead and read this book that has been sitting on your shelf for so long, go sign up to this yoga class, learn a new language, call up that old friend of yours you haven’t talked to in so long. Holidays are a good time of the year to reconnect with your inner self.

Though, holidays are also about traveling! For my part I think there is no greater time of the year to go out and explore the world! There is a dazzling amount of opportunities on our doorstep; it is time to release the hidden Christopher Columbus hiding inside each of us and to go explore the treasures of the world. There are so many ways in which one can enjoy a holiday, whether you prefer savoring a cocktail on a beautiful beach in Bali while admiring a wonderful sunset, going for a trek on the Himalaya Mountains, visiting an old Maya temple in Mexico, or going skiing to the French Alps. You get my point, holidays are really for everyone, the lazy, the adventurous, the athletes. Holidays don’t put anyone aside. We travel in the purpose of discovering other lives, other souls, other cultures and to find ourselves speechless in front of the beauty of the world!

There is no such luxury and treasure as the one a holiday can bring, culture, knowledge and memories come together and become one. Sometimes all we need is a beautiful place, with beautiful souls far away from home just to rest and remove all sort of negativity from our lives. We will never truly know all the surprises a holiday can bring, it might be a new lover, a new friend, a new job. We should go places we’ve never seen before, and travel the whole world with people we love. Holidays are a great opportunity to fill your life with experiences and stories to tell. Rich is the man who has the chance to marvel at small thing and fill his heart of the world’s beauty.

So let’s embrace the luck of this wealth, and let’s travel and create our memories for tomorrow with the people closest to your hearts and souls, let’s allow ourselves to feel experiences as they are, only focusing on the present moment, because now is all we have and everything in this life is ephemeral except the memories we make.

St. Augustine said it himself : « The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page » .

We are the sole writers of your book so let’s go explore the unknown and create a story worth reading for this new Holiday season!

By Laura Bounin