Big Family, Big Christmas - 405 Magazine

Big Family, Big Christmas

More than two dozen family members eager to shake off the cold and celebrate the holidays? No problem in the thoughtfully designed, joyously decorated Carty home.

WITH 29 FAMILY MEMBERS, including 14 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, Christmas Day at Janice and Terry Carty’s Nichols Hills home is big, joyous and loud. The interspersed morning arrivals of their five daughters’ families inevitably begin with eager children dashing, often with their heavy coats still on, for one thing: their personal stockings they know by heart from Christmases past.

Janice is a year-round hunter for stocking stuffers, so they’re too heavy to be easily hung with care. They flank the fireplace, dot the floor and sprawl on the skirt of the 9-foot tree in the family room.

The Cartys’ blended European-style abode’s nearly 7,000 square feet can handle the influx. Even in winter, the luxury backyard is available for overflow, warding away the cold with its own substantial fireplace and portable heaters surrounding the saltwater pool and spa.

Janice and Terry personally designed and built the home to be luxurious and large from the ground up. Janice is the driving force, along with daughter Amie Cook, behind The Wood Garden boutique in northwest OKC. The store is home base for her interior design services, but its small footprint doesn’t begin to capture the breadth of her work that takes the two, along with designer Lisa Cazes, all over the nation.

Excerpted from the fall 2013 edition of Design Oklahoma. To read the full article, click here to read our digital edition.