Hillsboro home shines bright

By Jeff Gilliland

Amber (Brethauer) Sprinkle’s childhood home at 434 N. High St., Hillsboro, is decorated for the holidays. The home is also decorated annually for Halloween and the Fourth of July.

There is no halfway on the holidays for one Hillsboro family in particular.

Amber Sprinkle’s childhood home on North High Street in Hillsboro is the brightest in town whenever Halloween and Christmas roll around.

“Everyone seems to love it, and all the family gets involved, too,” said Sprinkle, a 2000 Hillsboro High School graduate. “I think we’re all very similar in that aspect of our personalities. We usually go over the top, or we don’t do it.”

Sprinkle’s childhood home is located at 434 N. High St. where her mother and stepfather, Kim and James McKown, still live. Sprinkle no longer lives there, but she’s the one who does the vast majority of the decorating. She also decorates, although not as lavishly, for the Fourth of July.

“My mom and dad (Steve Brethauer), when we were little they would decorate for the holidays. As we got older me and my brother (the late David Brethauer) took it over, but I was the ringleader. A lot of the reason we do it is the enjoyment the community gets out of it. That’s the main motivation. Everyone seems to enjoy it. A lot of kids say things to us at trick-or-treat and a lot of people comment to my stepdad about it because he’s a dentist and the one that interacts with the public the most.”

She started decorating the outside of the home when she was perhaps late teens or early 20s, adding a bit more each year.

“I usually wait until after Christmas and then hit the clearance sales,” she said. “The day after Christmas I am everywhere getting lights and stuff, and Mom does, too, whenever she can find something.”

Decorating for Halloween is the most time consuming, Sprinkle said. She and her husband, Travis, starts making props in mid September and work about a week to set everything up with the help of her mom.

“I had someone tell me it’s too much,” Sprinkle said. “I told them they need to get out and walk through it because you’ll catch all kinds of little scenes you can’t see unless you’re up close.”

The public is welcome to walk through the front yard and take a closer look.

“I hope they do because I like them to see everything,” she said.

The Christmas decorations take about three days to put up, usually the first three days in December. The house will have its Christmas decor up until sometime after New Year’s.

Sprinkle said she gets her love of decorating from her mother. She said she plans to keep decorating and adding to the display year after year.

“I love decorating anything, whether it’s for parties, the holidays or landscaping. Anything that has a design to it, that’s what I love to do,” said Sprinkle. “We may add to it, modify it here and there, change it up in some ways. But as long as we can do it, we will.”

Salt Magazine

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