Baubles and bells, some new additions to my Christmas decorations

Recently I shared a look at some of the Homesense Christmas range, today I'm sharing some of my gloriously, pretty new baubles - all of which are from Homesense this year. It's a bit too early for me to have our tree up - I really am not that organised, and on a more practical level we still need to decide where it'll go, and clean that bit of the house!

But I am feeling more festive than I normally am - maybe it's the influx of mince pies, maybe it's our Advent calendar... But whatever it is, I dug out a metal card holder, which I rarely use as a card holder, and finally unboxed those new decorations.

Standing back and admiring my decorating ability, I realised it needed something more, so I dived back into my box of decorations and emerged with the bell and gingham bow garland from last year. Homesense have some ideas (10 in fact) on how you can impress your guests for less.

I'm liking how the stars and bells have curled themselves around these new highly decorative baubles, and how well the whole lot looks against the bamboo wallpaper in the background.

They really do have a feel of a Fabergé egg don't they?  Thankfully at nowhere near the price!

The decorations are creeping in - and up - but while it might feel festive here on my blog, I predict it won't be for a week or two before our tree goes up.  But no doubt, that will be here before we know it!

What do you think of my new baubles?

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!