Joyeux Noël

I had planned to dedicate the whole of Saturday to decking the halls (or the downstairs of our little cottage) but some last minute wrapping and card writing put paid to that (although I love making my own hand-stamped wrapping paper and cards it certainly does make the whole process more labourious!)

Saturday evening saw me finally getting our tree up and wrestling the various boxes of baubles and festive fripperies out of our attic to be unpacked and pondered over. I find that my decorating process usually involves a fair amount of pondering. Although, despite my chin-scratching, things are pretty much the same as they are most years (we don't really have the space to move the tree to another location). But I have very mildly "shaken things up" with my garland placement!

I kept the dining room mantle piece simple this year with a pretty paper heart garland from Oyster Bridge & Co. I also hung a little jingle bell heart from the middle as well. The large garland that usually goes there has been moved to the top of the dresser. So far, I'm quite liking the result!
I've also put a little cut glass bon-bon dish filled with out baubles that can't be hung on the tree in the middle of our dining room table.

One of my favourite Christmas decoration purchases this year is a pretty paper bell from Found Country Antiques. I really like the simplicity of it, unfortunately there was only one left but I found some more in a slightly pink tinged white card from An Angel at My Table. Both these and the white bell are made from sturdy card and have little magnets to keep it folded out so will hopefully last for many years to come. I love the little Christmas trees!

 It did seem a bit silly to be getting all of this out since we are spending this Christmas with my family up in their lovely stone farmhouse in the Scottish borders, but I couldn't resist! Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, wherever you are spending it!