By FINN HARTNETT

Staff writer

The mother-son duo of Melanie and Darren Franz is providing Hillsboro heaps of holiday spirit through unique window displays.

The pair has been creating displays since 2020 in two adjacent storefronts the family owns on Main St.

“We started during COVID, when people had nothing they could do but walk,” Melanie said. “It gave them something to look at, to enjoy.”

They create a display for each season of the year, plus a few extra for the holiday season.

The displays are much-loved by the community.

“We have one guy, whenever he has family coming in from out of town, he brings him over here so they can look,” Darren said. “He says he finds something different every time.”

Darren and Melanie have constructed 22 displays over four years.

They map out their creations long ahead of time. Next year’s Christmas display already is planned.

Such planning gives the pair time to visit antique shops and estate sales and dig through old items from relatives to create complex and considered exhibits.

Assembling the physical display is much quicker than the planning and shopping, Darren said.

“This one, in this stage, took us two days,” he said of their current Christmas display, which features automatic lights, a handcrafted letterbox, and elves made by a family friend in Florence, Kathleen Hyman.

While the work isn’t particularly improvisational, Darren and Melanie do occasionally change things after they see how a display looks in the window.

“We’ll go in here between now and Christmas and add things,” Darren said. “We’ve got a six-foot Santa going here.”

The Franzes take inspiration from the internet as well as their own memories of the seasons.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as just seeing an Instagram post or something on Pinterest, and taking this little idea and just expanding it,” Darren said.

The two of them work well as a team.

When they need to tweak something in a display, “we start looking around, thinking, and then we both come up with the exact same idea,” Darren said.

“It’s something we both enjoy doing,” Melanie said. “We work very well together.”

While a good Christmas display is always a priority, the Franzes have experimented with other holiday displays in past years.

“We did a whole Thanksgiving feast display,” Darren said. “We had a 10½-foot table.”

They have received compliments from around Hillsboro for their window art.

“People love it,” Melanie said. “It reminds a lot of the elderly people of when they were little kids.

“The whole reason to do this was to bring joy to the community. That’s what we wanted.”