My handmade Advent calendar

A few weeks ago I shared my prototype box for what I hoped would be my advent calendar.  The good news is that it's finished, but a few days into December. In preparation I'd bought a new die for my die cutting machine from Tonic Studios. Initially I was looking for a pillow box, but when I saw the Marquee Box I realised its potential and my plans changed.

I sussed out how it could work using the prototype, which I cut from the header page of some Christmas scrapbook paper, and as a fan of patchwork and colour, liked how it came out so have kept that in the final design.

Twenty four boxes is quite a few though. Each box needed two cuts of the die, so after a small workout for my arm and forty eight cuts later I was ready to assemble my boxes. The sheer number of these put me off for a bit, despite the start of the month looming. But with some pre-folding and a tray in front of the TV I set about sticking.

I'd tasked MOH to buy contents for half of the boxes, and I set about buying contents for the other half. Somehow all of our boxes have ended up with chocolate fillings, but that's no bad thing.

It did feel like a bit of a production line, and on more than one occasion I did wonder why I'd started, and if perhaps doing something for the twelve days of Christmas instead. But I'd started...

And so I finished. A few days in to December!

I was able to make use of lots of things I had too, which is always a winner for me. I had the scrapbook paper, I recycled tissue paper inside the boxes, the stars which I used for the numbers were from many years before - I'd previously used them as decorative touches on gifts, tags and cards, and the ribbon that I used to close the boxes were left over from an earlier craft project.

So apart from the die cut and the contents it turned into quite a thrifty project. 

I considered hanging the boxes, and wanted to use the silver pegs - that I've had for ages, and would you believe it there were 24 - and some bakers twine, which I've several reels of. The weight of the boxes though didn't really work for hanging vertically as I planned, and as we don't hang things on our wall, I was after another solution.

In the end I kept it simple and strung them together placing them under our television - the other place I'd considered was on top of a radiator, but knowing the contents that wouldn't work!

But I'm pleased with how they turned out, and it looks as if we've a village of festive boxes. Although not all of the paper I used was Christmas paper, however it all works together, and you can see the prototype box taking pride of place in the photo below (day 6).

A longer project than I expected but one that will provide fun - and chocolate - throughout the month. 

I love it - and I even got MOH involved too, as well as buying some of the contents, he was also chief number sticker on, as I thought I'd remember what was in each box, and so would lose the randomness of the contents! 

What do you think - would you make your own?

Totally tropical loos, Portuguese style

After a chilly day yesterday where I headed across London and back again by bus, tube and train I thought we could do with some warming up. And as there's not been an entry in the Loo Series for a while, I'm combining the two with a tropical loo from Porto. It was on the last night of our week in Portugal and the anticipation of the cabbage plate was still real.

Our hotel was a bit out of town and it was nice to see a different part to Porto. We arrived at the hotel late and it was the type of hotel that in its heyday would have been fantastic and super swish. It was perfectly clean and adequate but let's just say its heyday was a good few years before our arrival, which was a shame. 

We headed into the local town in search of a restaurant and stumbled upon what turned out to be the fanciest restaurant we'd eaten in the whole of our holiday.  I'll come onto that, but first let's concentrate on the loos.  In the Ladies I found myself sharing the space with this in bloom bird of paradise, beautiful isn't it?  

The decor was relatively plain with painted walls and what I first thought was wooden floor tiles on the wall. On closer inspection I discovered the wooden tiles were actually ceramic tiles, and that gave me a whole new appreciation of them. As that seemed less odd than having flooring on the wall - and yes, they were pretty effective.

The sink was a snazzy affair too, all angles and I was rather taken with it. Above the sink was a forest of pink orchids and it amused me to spot myself in the mirror through them, and when I realised my flamingo t-shirt felt right at home I couldn't help but smile to myself.

I said before it was probably the fanciest restaurant we'd eaten at, and of course by the end of our holiday our dress sense had relaxed too. While my flamingo top and white jeans felt perfectly fine in the loo, in the restaurant, which was full of LBDs I felt decidedly underdressed.

Oh well.

And look at that pudding, it was that kind of fancy restaurant.

Not in a bad way though, the glassware was a hit, but the dubious starters I was on my guard.

Back to the loos. The shared lobby entrance to the loos was something special too, a chair, mirror, some pictures and plenty of clocks.  And some more of those ceramic woodgrain tiles, this time on the floor.

So tropical loos, a flamingo top and plenty of time - that all makes for a great space, I'd say!

Feathers, berries and glitz at Homesense

Back in August Homesense invited me along to take a look at some of their Christmas range. You might think it strange to immerse yourself in all things festive at that time of year - and it is - but the weather did its best to make it feel like winter, as it was on one of those days where it rained and rained, and rained... so we didn't need to stretch our imagination too far at all!

You only need to glimpse at these pictures to see there is much loveliness in the Homesense Christmas range, but choosing, now that's the difficult thing - but they've put together this fun quiz to help you identify which festive trend is the one for you.

I loved the black feather wreath above and the jewelled bird that adorned it.  You'd think something that rich would work best on a plain background but the almost William Morris-like wallpaper worked equally well.  In contrast the white and gold plate setting appealed just as much, I'm not quite sure what that quiz will make of me!

I'm not one of these people that completely change their Christmas decorations each year, I much prefer to add to my collection each year and as in the rest of my life there's often quite a bit of colour. And I'm fine with that. These metal stars are something I'd happily add to my collection, I think they could be most versatile and used throughout our house. My trouble of course is convincing MOH we need more decorations, though he's often the first to say that our living room doesn't feel that Christmassy. Hmmmn.

The feathered bird wreaths were great though, and there's plenty of colourways to match your theme.

This year I'm very tempted to go with more rustic and natural elements and eucalyptus leaves are high on my wishlist.  Whether I go for the natural or glittery sort, or home-glittered sort I'm not sure yet, I'll see how it goes.  I'm planning to use some greenery from the garden and this could be the first year I take some trimmings from the small Christmas tree.

The pink glittery bird is clearly no fool, he (she?) has found a wreath that will see them through the festive season!

These lights made an impression on me too. I think MOH would rather have the drinks trolley though if I'm honest. I'm fine with the drinks, but could happily skip the trolley element - I wonder in years or months to come if I'll prove myself wrong with that last statement?

So plenty of glitz and quite a few feathers and berries in the Homesense Christmas range, I think I may need to pop along just for another look, and maybe to see what pops into my basket.

Do you have a theme to your Christmas decorations, or like me make additions as you go?

* Thanks to Homesense for the invitation to view the Christmas range.