My dad worked a lot at night, so when I was growing up, my mom and I would do a lot of the setup for the Christmas tree and party prep. She always made sure that things were friendly and enjoyable even if everyone was stressed. She passed away this last July. She will be greatly missed.

I originally started with a more traditional look, but it didn't work the way I wanted it to, so I wasted about 10 hours on that part. It took me about 2 hours to position and retexture everything correctly, and another 2 hours to try to get the lighting right. I did test renders on and off and those were probably close to 10 hours total. Final render time was about 5 hours. So total time was about 29 hours or so.

The room was Contemporary Living by Stonemason, imported from DAZ3D

The Christmas lights were part of the Yuletide Treasure Tree

The candle was part of the candle collection off DAZ3D (the flame was an alpha plane added and light by an independent light.)

The trees are Swindhelm's Conifers

The Northern lights were created in Photoshop and imported as an alpha plane. Scene was also color corrected in Photoshop