Open House at the Brooks by Hanna Dagg
Once the Bitterroot air gets that crisp fall smell, residents of Corvallis know that The Brooks’ open house is just around the corner.
Every year around the first part of October The Brooks Christmas and Gifts shop puts on a show of Christmas splendor for the kick off to the holiday season.
Owner of the all year-round Christmas store Bunny Robbins-Des says that this year was the ninth annual open house and even though it is a lot of hard work, in the end it is “ a good time.”
There is a lot of effort that goes into preparing for the open house. Robbins-Des had The Brooks repainted which pushed back the open house by a week. Tony Des, husband to Robbins-Des, came up with themes like “A Touch of Red” and “Aquamarine” and decorated each of the trees filling all eight rooms in the house.
“Once we decorate the trees, they stay the way they are till next year,” said Des.
The Brooks opened to the public at 2 p.m. with hot apple cider and The Brooks Sister’s sugar cookies out for customers. Lois Ray and Fran Dunbar, both employees at The Brooks, got a call from a customer telling them of a special sugar cookie recipe made by the Brooks family years before. There is a mixture of butter and oil in the cookies that “make them melt in your mouth,” said Ray. Dunbar and Ray made over four dozen cookies for the occasion and they were a big hit.
At 5 p.m. the sweets switched to savory sandwiches and champagne until 8 p.m. when the sale ended. Gail Hammer volunteers every year to help out with the food and drinks. She said the store and the people are so welcoming that she likes to lend a hand whenever she can.
Built in 1894, The Brooks family bought the building in 1916. It operated as a farm, a hotel and a boarding house. Local schoolteachers to cake mix mogul Duncan Hines stayed at the hotel, boasting to their good food and hospitality. When Robbins-Des bought the two-and-one-half story house in the late 1990s, most of the original woodworking was still intact and the original barns still stood. She had the barns moved closer to the house for storage, but on the whole Robbins-Des has kept The Brooks looking the same as when it was built over 100 years ago.
The Christmas shop sells everything from miniature guitar ornaments to interactive clocks to holiday wine caddies. The Brooks employees were kept busy running back and forth helping the growing crowd of customers.
“I’m glad I wore comfortable shoes,” said Cammi Diaz. This was the first open house she has worked at The Brooks.
The feel of the open house was that of one big family. People from all over the Bitterroot stopped by for some decorations and left with full stomachs and new friends. Just like the Brooks family did it decades ago, Robbins-Des is keeping up with The Brooks Hotel tradition.