We enjoyed Christmas Eve with the family. Peter & me were surrounded by loved ones..we didn' t need more....It was perfect in all it's simplicity...
I want to wish all my readers all the best for 2016.
We are grateful for all the great comments during the past year and we are fortunated to be able to work for all our customers, both new and old.
MY WISHES FOR 2016:
I hope you will have a wonderful year
That you'll dream dangerously an outrageously
That you'll make something that didn' t exist before you made it
That you will be loved
That you will be liked
That you will have people to love and to like in return
and, most importantly, because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now, that you will, when you need to be, be wise and that you'll always be kind...
Neil Gaiman
I want to share some pictures of our Christmas and new years eve...hope you enjoy
Styling the seasons for December couldn't be easier really, it's something we all do, although some of us tend to continue the idea for the rest of the year in some form or another! Set up by Katy and Charlotte it's been such a great community to be involved with and another thing that I have Instagram to thank for bringing us together. Luckily for me as I live in the countryside there is enough greenery in my garden and around where I live to supply me with some seasonal essentials - holly with berries and pine cones. So here's what Ive done to decorate the house this Christmas.
I like to group the mercury glass on this old over mantle. The mirror back is great at throwing the candle light back around the room for a soft mood.
I treated myself to some beeswax candles. I have become a bit candle obsessed and along with a real fire, I like to have some nice smelling ones burning during the day. My absolute favourites this year came from Amalia who writes the blog "these small finds" and can be found on instagram as _apothecary_ . Amalia found some beautiful blue bell jars from the USA and filled them with soy wax candles, she finds the most lovely containers including the little cake tin ones on my mantlepiece.
These cookie hearts came from a supermarket in Sweden. I added a bit of icing to them. They are called Pepparkakkor and have a lovely gingerbread smell. I included them into my banister arrangement. Im so happy to finally have a house with open wooden banisters on the staircase, for no other reason than to decorate it in December.
Some of my Swedish lights for the front window combined with the paper stars, bringing a bit of that beautiful place back home with me.
I didn't decorate this gingerbread heart myself, it was already iced with Kurbits decoration from the Swedish supermarket and luckily made it home in one piece. The top garland is from an online dried flower company and made from cotton pods, I've never seen one before but I absolutely love it. The design motif called Kurbits is traditional in Sweden and can be found on many things. It is a style of painting normally, based on vegetables and floral organic shapes, it was originally a fertility symbol. You can find it on the little wooden Dala Horses, embroidered onto clothing and painted onto furniture. In a nearby village there is a Christmas barn which opens at weekends in December, it is the most stunning Tythe barn you have ever seen and is full to bursting with decorations and presents. I topped up on a few new pieces like the string of bells and the metal birds. They also have candles from the candle makers St Eval which are great quality. The Tythe barn in Haddenham is the perfect place to get you in the spirit and mood for a time of cozy evenings with friends and family, a sparkly and fairy like grotto which can be recreated at home. I wish you all a healthy happy holiday with good food and warm drinks to help you relax and have a few days of nesting in your very own grotto. Sending you love and peace from my little village in Buckinghamshire.
Sweden is such a beautiful country, yes sure it has it's industrial areas and shopping malls like everywhere but the houses are such a multitude of traditional and unusual colour combinations and at this time of year, when everyone has lights in the windows and on the porches, it is picture book perfect.
Maybe because the houses are mostly wooden cladded this has led to the whole house needing paint but the array of different colours used makes for the most beautiful look. There is of course, the traditional red houses with white and yellow windows but look at the details and you will see that there are other things coming into play here. Usually choosing two tones but sometimes with another added for highlighting details like the window frames.
Not only are all the windows decorated with lights and Yul objects, but there is also the tradition of having a candle lit outside our door to welcome guests. All the shop owners do this and it makes for the most magical look. We visited our favourite Christmas market in Sigtuna, this is such a gorgeous place, set on a lake and one of the oldest towns in Sweden. The market is a mixture of handicrafts and food.
If you are wondering what this is above, well meet Tomte a Swedish house gnome which also replaces Santa in some houses, the cute little fellow has been given a new twist here, depicting him in greenery. This Tomten lives in the forest and likes to be fed porridge! My bag came home full, with a mixture of old and new. I found lovely knitwear in my favourite shop called Indiska. Lovely quality fairisle style cardigans and some cups from their new range. I also managed to pick up some Swedish made wool while we were in Sigtuna and intend to knit some Nordic mittens in black and white. No trip would be complete without a good rummage in second hand shops and a large haul of old cake tins and some mini candlesticks ticked off more on my wish list. These will all feature over on my Instagram feed over the course of this month. I do of course bring home many of ideas and inspiration for lights and candles, my home will feature the classic candleabra lights in the front window, stars and wreaths and decorations made from Pepparkakor (gingerbread) and folliage. I hope these photos will help to get you in the mood too.
When Dorian invited me to stay at his cottages in Wales I couldn't wait. In my life as an international promotions manager I visited countries around the world, continually on the road traveling with artists, in all those years I was hardly ever home in my London flat, I was in Japan, South America, Hungary, Mexico ... you name it, I went there.
Two things happened as a result, when it finally stopped I wanted to be at home as much as possible and the thought of getting on an airplane was about as exciting as getting on a hopper bus. The second thing was a longing to explore the UK more. Also now bored to death of hotel rooms, I find myself a rather curmudgeonly guest if the service isn't brilliant and the decor is drab.
For me now the absolute ideal is to have a beautifully decorated, tastefully and sensitively adorned, home from home, why would I want to stay somewhere that wasn't as nice as my own house? Well, at times it's necessity so cost and surroundings reach a compromise, but then that is just a place to sleep. What I really yearn for is an experience. I want to be impressed, I want to be romanced by my surroundings. I want the possibility to explore a new area, to take photographs and be educated by the history, this to me is the only sort of 'holiday' that makes sense. Hell for me would be to be on a sunbed in a resort full of English people.
I knew, I just knew, that the Welsh House would be perfect, I could see that it ticked all the boxes and I wasn't wrong. I had the idea to do some Christmas styling so packed up a few decorations and off we trotted.
I don't know a great deal about Dylan Thomas and this is something I intend to rectify, so when Dorian produced the most beautiful edition of "A child's Christmas in Wales" the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. Influenced by that idea I bring you these photos and some quotes from Dylan Thomas
I found some beautiful music to accompany this post ...
"One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six ..."
one of my hand knitted socks, my favourite thing is to knit socks
"All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find"
don't forget to leave out mince pies and milk for Father Christmas
then off to bed you go and try to sleep
"Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept."
“I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream.”
And I rose In rainy autumn And walked abroad in a shower of all my days...”
outside the fairies live, dancing in the moss and lichen, vibrant greens and leaf strewn paths invite you to a magical world
There is magic inside this place, it feels other worldly. It is a place where your mind can be free to dream, like a child waiting for Santa. I'm not going to write here about Dorian's work here because you should go for yourself, sit and read the cuttings from papers in his folders of information. Photos from a re-enactment where dressed in traditional Welsh costume, Dorian and surrounding neighbours built a traditional house in one day. It is a work of brilliance and no words or photos can do it full justice. Quotes by Dylan Thomas. Photos by Janice Issitt. Location - The Welsh House, blankets from Holy Cow Home
