I had hoped to be organised enough this year to blog my preparations and decorations for Christmas 2015…however; being a teacher meant there was plenty of marking and planning to be done and also being a mother there was similar amounts of buying and wrapping to be done!  So here I am, 27th December 2015, perhaps blogging some ideas for Christmas 2016…?

I love getting ready for Christmas, and like many people, I buy the Christmas editions of various home magazines and flick through old magazine cuttings and catalogues that come through the post.  However; one of my favourite places to go around Christmas time with my family is London – Santa’s grottos, ice rinks, Oxford Street and Regent Street lights, Seven Dials, shop windows and Christmas on Columbia Road.

(images from http://www.wharf.co.uk, http://www.columbia-flower-market.freewebspace.com and Timeout)

As I was choosing our  wrapping paper, gift-tags, ribbon, Christmas decorations etc (which my husband tells me I take way too much time & consideration over!), I thought about Shoreditch and Columbia Flower market.   I combined vintage floral with utility: brown paper, twine, white ribbon, tags with a retro font and vintage fabric lavender hearts.

For decorations, we went a bit mad with fairy lights and foliage…our London Christmas lights and a bit of Columbia Road Flower Market!

Christmas Decorations at home: The Christmas Tree

Our Christmas tree was decorated with lots of fairy lights, paper
baubles and snowflakes (from John Lewis, Pearl & Earl and The Paper Snowflake Company).  We also chose rustic metal and wooden tree decorations in the shapes of hearts, stars and reindeers (I always like looking in supermarkets and garden centres for decorations).  I made lots of gingerbread star biscuits with my sons, which they loved decorating with white icing and silver balls.  This year, I remembered to make a hole in the biscuits as soon as they came out of the oven and were still soft!  I also bought some wooden hearts from Hobbycraft and using rubber letter stamps the boys stamped our initials on them…

Fairy lights, bunting and giant paper snowflakes!

We decorated the house with lots of fairy lights (from Lights4fun, attaching them with Command decoration hooks), giant snowflakes (from the Paper Snowflake company) and bunting (from Pearl & Earl).

Winter Foliage

When we went to buy our Christmas tree there were lots of Christmas tree branches left on the ground…so I asked the vendor if I could collect them up to take home and thinking I was slightly mad, he said yes.  I used them to decorate the mirrors, fireplace mantel and the Christmas table.

For the Christmas table arrangement I bought the teapot from a charity shop and added Eucalyptus foliage to the holly, ivy and Christmas tree branches!  I also like daffodil and hyacinth bulbs around the home at Christmas…

In fact Christmas seems to turn up all over our house…

Making Lavender Hearts

First I chose my fabrics, buttons and ribbons.  I collected lots of different retro style fabrics from Ebay and various charity shops, and an assortment of buttons from Hobbycraft…for ribbon I went for white.  I then (while watching Monsters Inc with the boys one rainy Saturday afternoon), used a heart template I had printed from Google images and drew around it on the ‘wrong’ side of the fabric.  I then repeated for the plain white fabric  which will be the back of the lavender heart.

I cut out the hearts using pinking shears, being careful to leave a 1cm gap between my cutting line and the line I drew.  I then chose a button to match the fabric…having said that, I like unusual colours together like oranges and turquoises, yellows and blues, lime greens, pinks and oranges.  I sewed the button on to the floral fabric on the ‘right’ side…

I then pinned the floral fabric with the plain fabric, making sure that the lines I drew are on the outside as I was pinning the hearts together I pinned the ribbon the inside…

I then sewed along the lines I had drawn and then remembered to leave a 2cm gap near the bottom of the heart to turn the heart inside out. I then filled the heart with dried lavender using a funnel..a source of much hilarity for my husband and sons..!

Then carefully sewed up the remaining part of the heart with tiny stitches. They were then ready to add to the presents…