Pom Pom Tiddley Pom

A few weeks a go I decided I wanted a pom pom garland for my stairs this year instead of the green fake one I've used before.

First I bought the wool, in semi Christmassy colours

I knew there was a quick way of making several pom poms at the same time, much quicker than wrapping round cardboard that I used to do as a child.  I tried making a frame out of an old wire coat hanger but it was a bit hazardous with the hook so I bought  frame from multipom.

You wrap the wool around the frame and then tie it at equal distances - I wrapped 110 times and made 4 pompoms at a time

Then you cut in the middle of each tie, do a bit of trimming and fluffing up, and voila, pompoms!

I then threaded them together to make a garland.

Now they are tied onto my stairs (with the ends tucked well out of sight to avoid becoming a cat game!)

I chose the colours not just to match the chair but also to co-ordinate with the vintage glass baubles that I brought back from Mum and Dad's one weekend, treasures found in the loft.

They are now hanging on the tree, along with some modern ones.

It's slightly wonky, but who cares!

Have a wonderful Christmas and a brilliant 2016

A Christmas Wreath

Last year my quite old wreath suffered rather in an overnight storm (actually most of it disintegrated and ended up spread along the road) so this year I decided to have a go and make my own.  I've never made one before but having bought a willow ring I gathered greenery, seed heads and hips from the garden and this is the result.

I'm rather pleased with it, and an added bonus is that it smells really nice due to the elaeagnus leaves!

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and thanks for reading my ramblings over the last year :-)

What No Christmas tree?

Shock, horror - no christmas tree?  "But you must have a tree!" said many of my work colleagues when I said I was planning on doing things differently this year.  I'm not a huge fan of Christmas decorations but I did want something, so I decided to keep things much simpler this year and this is what I've done.

I picked the red stems of cornus elegantisma from the garden, wrapped some lights around them and hung a few small gold or wooden decorations from them, including some gold skeleton leaves.

The table candles have been given a wrap of ivy (my garden has loads!),

and the stairs have their usual garland.

I sprayed some agapanthus seed heads (again from the garden) and put them in a vase with lights and gold chains (next to Mrs Bovver Boots Angel),

added some more ivy above some pictures and mirrors and put some of the unused baubles onto a platter.

It's simpler, it's more me, and I'm happy!  Now I still need to tackle wrapping presents and doing some cooking, oh and watch the Strictly final too :-)

Happy Christmas everyone - have a wonderful time whatever you're doing.

Nearly Ready for Christmas

We finally got real, proper snow here last weekend.  This is what my garden looked like at the beginning of the week.
 

I couldn't get into the greenhouse for several days, but fortunately the little paraffin heater kept going without requiring a top-up and everything in there seems to have survived fine without me.

Every year I end up racing around for Christmas at the last minute, and this year is no exception.  The snow hasn't helped that, but I think that finally I am nearly done.  The house is cleaned, the food is bought, the tree is up and the presents are nearly all bought. Of course I haven't wrapped anything yet and I still need to make the mince pies but there's still about 36 hours left isn't there!   Before I get wrapping though I think I should sample the chocolate biscuits, after all it would be wrong to offer them to guests without testing the quality first wouldn't it?!

I hope you all have wonderful Christmases and wish you all lots of happiness and peace in 2011.