PHOTOS: 32nd Annual Ellwood City Municipal Women’s Club House Tour

The Ellwood City Municipal Women’s Club will be holding their 32nd Annual Christmas House Tour on Saturday, December 8, from 10:00 a.m until 3:00 p.m. On the tour, there will be five homes featured. Tickets are $10 and sold at local businesses such as Kimpel’s Jewelers and Blocher’s Jewelers, Marketplace on Main, Shop at the Underpass and Posies by Patti. The tickets can also be purchased by calling Sherry Sheen at 724-612-5755 or by purchasing them at select homes that are participating on the day of the tour.

This event will be featuring the homes of Debbie and Gregg Paul, Adrienne Majors, Cassandra and Paul Pisheoneri, and Sandy Matico. Along with these homes, Chapel Valley Estates, owned by Pat and Bob Bishop, will be opening their doors for the first time to this tour. All of these homes are first time participants and all are anxiously awaiting visitors on Saturday.

The bed and breakfast located on 297 Chapel Drive, North Sewickley had been an aged farmhouse on unattended grounds that received a fresh start back in 2003. When Pat and Bob Bishop purchased the property 4 years ago, they were just amazed at how little remodeling that had to be done to make the Chapel Valley Estate their own. They turned it into a bed and breakfast that comfortably sleep 22 people at one time while adding a new addition as an event room that is used to host special events like bridal showers, baby showers, graduations, weddings, and family reunions. The natural stone walls and recycled building materials truly reflect the charm of rural Western Pennsylvania, and that’s just the outside.

The inside makes you feel right at home, with an open kitchen and dining area, a cozy lounge area upstairs, and bedrooms that hold their own character. As soon as you get upstairs, make sure you look up for a beautiful aluminum ceiling that owner Pat Bishop absolutely fell in love with when she was considering the purchase of the home. The bed and breakfast have been booked solid the week of the tour, including all rooms booked on Friday. However, Pat isn’t worried. She’s confident in herself and her staff to get the rooms back into a tip-top state for the tours on Saturday morning.

“I wanted to do the tour because I feel very blessed to be here,” Pat Bishop said.

Her trees are filled with BottleBrush Animals as well as small nicknacks and figuring placed around the home. Her mugs and plates are also Christmas themed. With three trees in the estate, she surely needed plenty of hands in decorating this year. Bishop says that on top of her employes, including Geneva student Megan Cramer and Caitlyn Froce, her daughter Kim Haberman and granddaughter Daphne Haberman offered as many hands as they could, along with her mother Marian Dambach.

“I just feel that homes are meant to be lived in, but that’s kinda like a house.” She said, “It needs to be shared and loved and that’s what makes it a home.”

Next on the tour will be the home of Debbie and Greg Paul. The Pauls live on 141 Jackson Drive, and visitors will be met with lighted reindeer in the front yard. The Pauls had purchased the three-bedroom, ranch style home, built in the 1960s, 35 years ago from Greg’s parents. The Pauls added an apartment for Greg’s mother, which after her passing was used as an office space for Greg until he retired. The apartment will also be apart of the tour. They redid a few rooms of the home, including the master bathroom and the dining room. The ornaments on the trees within the home are decorated with ornaments that are over 30 years old, along with the ornaments, hanging over the fireplace in the living room is a reef made completely out of recycled metals. The weight of decorating the home, however, fell all on Debbie’s shoulders.

“I just hope that everyone enjoys looking at my home and that they can just feel happy to be here,”  Debbie Paul said, while her husband interjected and explained that he hoped everyone felt the Christmas spirit in their home.

Following the Paul’s home, comes the home of Adrienne Majors at 118 Clearwater Drive. Majors is a retired Riverside teacher and resides in the condominium, where she’s lived for the past 12 years. Coming to the door, you’ll be greeted by green pines and a fuzzy looking teddy bear. Majors said that her trees and rooms follow two themes, one an angel theme and one a Santa theme. She decored her home with the help of her youngest daughter Lisa Knight and granddaughter Lacey Knight.

“It’s just a happy place, a happy Christmas,” Majors said.

The second to last home is the home of Sandy Matiko. She had lived in her home for 10 years, and since she had built it there has been no previous owners. With the help of her daughter Abbey Matiko, the two-story, five-bedroom home that sits at 476 Country Club Drive is filled with her snowmen collection, along with 8 Christmas trees, all fully decorated.

“I am very particular (when it comes to decorations). I could tell you exactly where I bought each and everyone.” Sandy Matiko said.

Her decorations consist of around 200 snowmen, out of her 300 that she’s collected over the years. Her snowmen range from little knickknacks to the two 5-foot-tall snowmen that sit at the front door of the home, just waiting to greet the visitors on Saturday.

The last home you will see is the home of Paul and Cassandra Pisheoneri. They built their home back in 2017, and following in Cassandra’s mother’s footsteps, decided to participate in the house tour this year. Cassandra’s mother was apart of one the first house tours when the Municipal Women’s Club began conducting them. Their two-story home is decorated with a sense of bringing the outdoors, inside. Some the ornaments you will see were actually made by Paul when he was younger. In the finished basement, the tree-skirt is camouflage. It is made from a hunting blind that never quite made it outside.

“We’re really happy to have the opportunity to build a new home that we’ve always wanted.”  Paul added that they also felt really honored to have been asked to participate this year, “[So] Why not let others in the community come and enjoy it just as much as we do?”