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?

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.

A Christmas table with TK Maxx

As this year has been all about our new table and chairs, when TK Maxx got in touch to collaborate on a homewares post, I was keen to see how I could use some of their christmas decorations to dress my new table in a fun, and probably not so practical way. So on a recent miserable Sunday afternoon we headed along to the Orpington branch, to see what we could find.

I was rather pleased with this Merry Christmas garland. It's on two strings, so normal people could hang them one above the other. Clearly I'm not normal as I spent more time than I should have getting these to stand up on the radiator cover. The Christmas was trickier, as you can see, and some of the letters were refusing and a little skew-whiff. But I don't mind that, and rather like the character this brings to what is usually an undecorated part of our house. 

I think some blu-tak might be deployed!

On the table the jingle bell lights, with gingham bows brought much amusement, as the bells are proper bells. The lights are battery operated and will be great to have on our table Christmas Day for some festive fun.  I'll also be having some of those cute tea lights on the table, even though it will be tough to light the top of his hat.

I was keen to pick up some of these recycled glasses. Not only because they're recycled, but also because our hi-ball glasses are getting tired and could do with replacing. At just £5.99 for four glasses I don't think you can go wrong, and as I'm on a bit of a "drink more water" campaign, having glasses I'm proud to put on the table helps.

And how could I leave this cheeky faced reindeer garland in the shop. It's wooden with hints of gold and cheeky faces, and I know it'll fit in with the rest of my wooden decorations. I also think it'd look good intermingled with my garland of dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and pine cones.

I told you the jingle bell garland lit up didn't I? Here you can see the one of the owls looking on. These have been the decoration of the year for me, they're really quite cute and have migrated to my tree, making themselves perfectly at home.

I had great fun styling my festive table with the decorations I picked up from TK Maxx. You'll be pleased to know that as well as the glasses for water and the water jug, there will also be some bubbles on our table this Christmas, because well, because bubbles were made for Christmas.

The other thing I was keen to pick up was a new star for the top of my tree. I'd converted a beaded star decoration which I've used for many years, so it was time for a change. In the end I settled on this gold diamante style star, with its spring-like base, which makes it way easier than my converted star, especially when the tree is 6 foot and I'm not!

I'm pleased with the items I picked up - the glasses, the jingle bell garland, the reindeer garland, the Merry Christmas sign, the Father Christmas tea lights, the cheeky owls and the glittery star tree topper - and I was even more pleased with the price, all of this came to £38. 

Have you updated your decorations this year?

This is a collaborative post with TK Maxx, who provided a gift voucher for the purposes of this post. All views are my own.