Decorations

The Christmas decorations went up at The House with the Blue Door on Sunday, and I must say it's looking very festive around here. In previous years I have habitually got everything out of the boxes and put all of it up, but this year I decided to be more selective and a bit more controlled about it all. I must say that as a result it's looking less chaotic and I like it. I started off in the hallway.

This year I bought two of these honeycombed tissue decorations and I love them. They remind me of the Christmas decorations of my childhood in the 70s and 80s, and this deep red is gorgeous.

I can never resist paper chains, but always staple them so they don't keep popping open over the festive period.

I strung a lot of tiny baubles onto cotton yarn to make these long garlands, and like the simplicity of them.

In the dining room I decided to keep everything white, silver and pastel as the room is blue and white, and in previous years lots of colours don't look right in there (I'm not sure that anyone else in my family has noticed this - think I'm the only person who feels strongly about it!). Here's the other honeycomb decoration, a snowflake.

Think I managed not to photograph any cobwebs.

Some more silver and white.

And my 'fairy bough'. I put this together every year, after having had the idea for it when I bought the twiggy bunch years ago, and gathered together all my little fairies and bell decorations.

On to the living room now, and it's time for some colour. The chimney of our house was taken down long before we moved in, so the fireplace isn't working, but the berry lights add a glow, along with the candles. 

The same decorations have been coming out for years, and I'm very fond of them.

Last year I made these easy little birds from pretty card saved from old crackers.

Finally, the tree. D decorated it for us and she made a lovely job of it. We do like the 'more is more' approach (no minimalism around here!), and all sorts of decorations come together on it. The silver tinsel has been around for a long time, and could soon be classed as an antique, or family heirloom, I think.

Every year I buy a couple of small baubles to add to our treasured collection. This year I bought these two little glass cones. I so love the way they reflect the twinkle of the fairy lights (they might not actually be glass, but look like it).

I'm very fond of these vintage-style decorations.

And I especially love ones made by my children in previous years.

You can't have enough fairies in my opinion.

All in all it was fun to decorate, and to think about what sort of colour-scheme I wanted. I can never decide whether I like traditional red, green and gold, frosty white and silver, natural hedgerow, jewel colours or vintage. The truth is that I love all of it and am happiest when I've got a bit of everything, but it has been fun to do things a bit differently this year. Right, time to start writing those Christmas cards which you can see piled up on the dining room window sill.