The Nutcracker House

 

12/23/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Each holiday season for more than a decade, a family has been displaying stage design props from Maurice Sendak’s Nutcracker ballet in front of their Sunset Hill neighborhood house. This Seattle Times article explains how the owners started acquiring the pieces, one of which is 15 feet tall, after the ballet production retired in 2014. A team of neighbors and friends helps out each year.

Although I’ve known about “the Nutcracker house” for a long time, it was the Times’ recent article and learning about how much work it takes to put up the display that gave me the nudge to finally go and sketch it.

Meeting Mary Jean there around 4 p.m., I had just enough daylight to sketch a few characters with the house behind it (top of post). The 1936 house looks like a fairytale year-round!

MJ and I talked about how some characters are kind of creepy, like this nutcracker with the maniacal grin. I wonder if some kids found this ballet scary?

By 4:30, it was dark, and that’s when the illuminated characters really came to life (see my Instagram post for a short video of the scene). Although it got more and more difficult to see, we both kept going until, as MJ said, she couldn’t tell which colors were which anymore. It pushed my nocturne sketching to a new level of darkness! It was also the most fun sketching I did this holiday season. 

Merry Christmas!

Scowling Mouse King (the one on the left)

15-foot-tall Nutcracker