Photo: Rachael Ray Instagram
It was a milestoneChristmasforRachael Rayand her husbandJohn Cusimano.
The couple, who celebratedtheir 16th wedding anniversaryback in September, spent the holiday together attheir home in Lake Luzerne, N.Y.— the first Christmas they’ve shared there since the rebuilding of their house after a devastating firecompletely burned it to the groundin August 2020.
It was a pleasant upgrade from last year’s holiday season when the pairheld Thanksgiving on the back porch of their detached guest home during construction.
Now inside again, Ray appeared to go all out for Christmas, sharing photos of her decorated home to her Instagram page on Friday.
The Food Network start and talk show host hung a sea of sparkling white icicle lights from the windows of her great room, topping them with a garland runner. In the center of a room stood a tabletop Christmas tree, adorned with icicle ornaments and silver balls. A collection of owl figurines stood below (and presents wrapped in brown paper, below that).
“It’s beginning to look a lot like….✨🎄✨,” Ray captioned the photos.
Of course, Ray’s post also included pictures of the spread of food she made, including bagel sandwiches decorated to look like reindeer and a Christmas Eve feast that even jolly old St. Nicholas couldn’t finish.
She also posted a photo of herself on Christmas day hugging her dog Bella, writing. “Bella is so over the costumes, but she’s my #Christmas🎄angel 😇.”
“Merry Everything, everyone! Xo,” Ray said.
“The entire property was gone. There was nothing,” the talk show host told PEOPLE in September. “It was literally a hole in the ground. It was considered a 100% loss. And they cleared away the entire, everything. Took it all.”
It took them a full year to rebuild,restoring in the process as much of Ray’s original designs from when the home was first constructed 15 years earlier.
Throughout it, Ray and Cusimano, both 53, continued filming her talk show remotely and remained a united force to get to the other side.
“We knew we’d get through this together,” said Ray, who chronicled much of the process in her latest book,This Must Be the Place. “When you’re left at home alone for too long, you start to lose a little perspective. You can get tunnel vision and think, ‘Everything’s revolving around us and our little problems.’ But there are so much worse positions we could be in.”
“At the end of the day, John and I, we always come back to grateful. Some days are different than others, but we try to say, ‘Okay, here’s the new plan,’ even when we get down,” Ray continued — joking, “We’re likeMoonstruckover here. We just keep saying, ‘Stop your whining and snap out of it.’ "
Silja Magg
Still, there were hard times. As tough as it was watching the home burn, seeing it rebuilt was sometimes just as painful.
The most difficult moment of all came when she saw the property completely rebuilt as she remembered it, something she first thought would be a comfort.
“Do you know, it’s the opposite?” she said. “It really weirded me out. It was harder to walk in when they first finished rebuilding.”
“The first time I walked in and just saw all of those white walls, I was a basket case,” Ray added. “Because when you look at the walls you see everything that was there in front of you like you’re watching a movie. Like vividly. And that was weird and hard. I could just not separate reality from… what was my life. … It was easier to just see it gone than to look.”
The Rachael Ray Show
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She’s also been fixing upa stunning villa purchaseda few years ago in Tuscany, Italy, which Ray has previously called “my life’s goal.”
source: people.com
