My Christmas

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope that you've all had a good break over the festive season.  I've really enjoyed having time off from my work and studies.  No white Christmas here of course.  We had a lot of foggy and damp days that were quite mild.  It didn't feel that festive outside, but it certainly felt festive indoors!  Here's a little pictorial roundup of our Christmas.

Our family obligations were before and after Christmas, so my husband and I had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to ourselves.  Christmas Eve was spent preparing the food for the next day, frantically gift-wrapping, and then relaxing in the evening with a lovely Oxtail stew and some cocktails (including the 'Tuxedo' sherry martini that Mim wrote about in the latest issue of In Retrospect).  I wore a red dress from Pretty Retro that I need to do a proper outfit post for, as it's really fabulous.

It's Nearly Christmas!

Yesterday was my last day in work, and so today I'm beginning a lovely long (and much deserved!) break of just over two weeks.  The last few weeks have been manic, as I'm sure they have been for many of you too.  I had a PhD report to submit, an article to write for In Retrospect magazine, on top of the day job, Christmas shopping, and trying to squeeze in a bit of sewing.  I've been to three Christmas parties and a Christmas concert, as well as hosting a lunch and a Christmas party.  There have been some fabulous, yet undocumented outfits, which means I'll have to wear them again over the holidays and take lots of photographs to share with you.  In the meantime, these snaps from Instagram will have to do.

Best and Worst Channel 5 Christmas Films

Channel 5 Christmas films are my guilty pleasure.  If you aren't aware, Channel 5 screens lots of American made-for-TV films.  This includes a large selection of festively themed films at this time of year, and they generally are of the 'so bad they're good' variety.  This year though, I've been surprised that some of them have actually been... good.  With proper scripts.  And acting.  Here then are my top picks, to get you in the festive spirit.  (I'm afraid this is for UK-based readers who have access to Channel 5, but you may have these films on other channels in your country).

The Best

Above: Daniel is dead.  Or is he? 'The Spirit of Christmas'

Festive Doorways

I'm officially feeling festive.  Last weekend we went to a Christmas market at Miskin Manor, a local hotel.  They had decked the halls, and Christmas cheer was certainly present.  Roaring fires, the smell of seasonal scented candles, and Christmas songs provided by glamorous double-act Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in red sequin gowns.  Oh, and a Welsh male voice choir!  I do believe Father Christmas was in his grotto too, but we didn't pay him a visit.  Instead, we had a good browse of the stalls, and around the grounds.  The manor has a number of rather lovely doorways, so the obligatory photos were taken.

Festive Trousers

These red trousers are my third pair of the House of Foxy's 1940s swing trousers.  I'm unapologetic about buying something in several different colours if you really love it - it's rare that something fits well, is within budget, and washes and wears well.  I love red, but for some reason the trousers languished unworn in my wardrobe for a few months, as they didn't seem appropriate for Autumn somehow.  When the Christmas holidays arrived I knew it was time to dig them out and enjoy their festiveness.  I've worn them many times over the past few weeks in styles of various eras, but I thought I'd show a simple outfit today where the trousers are the main star.  It was another very wet and dark day, so please excuse the indoor lighting and general clutter, it just hasn't stopped raining enough to venture outdoors and do some proper shoots!

My Christmas

Welcome readers, new and old!  I am just starting to re-connect with the outside world, from the little cocoon of my living room.  It's been terribly wet here in Wales, and there have been days when I haven't ventured outside at all.  The beauty of the internet however means that I have started catching up on reading blogs, and enjoying the festive snippets from your lives all around the world.  I've also done a little internet shopping, thanks to some Christmas vouchers, so as I write this I'm testing out a What Katie Did waist cincher (definitely needed after the over-indulgence of eating cheesecake for breakfast over the last few weeks) and waiting for the post to arrive bringing some goodies from the House of Foxy,  More on the purchases another time, as there is a lot to share (good and bad!).



Christmas was lovely for me this year, a quiet one at home with my husband and his mother.  We never buy particularly extravagant presents, no massive TVs, Ipads or XBox type gifts under the tree in this household, but we do tend to buy quite a few things, with there being a focus on the charity-shop challenge as to what you can buy each other for next to nothing.  Our Christmas morning always starts with present opening with a cup of tea, a pause for a champagne breakfast, and then more present opening with more champagne.  We dress up, and this year I wore my blue and white Whispering Ivy dress with red shoes, a red shrug, and those fabulous new poinsettia shoe clips.  I'm afraid I don't have any full length shots as I was too busy drinking champagne.

Abbey-Cwm-Hir Hall at Christmas

I am off work for two whole weeks over Christmas, and to help us get in the festive spirit I decided to take my husband on a day trip to mid Wales, to see the Hall at Abbey-Cwm-Hir.  Open to the public, this historic gothic Victorian mansion is a family home owned by a retired couple with a penchant for collecting just about anything.  Each year, the 52 rooms of the sprawling house are decorated from top to bottom for Christmas.  Located in a small village that was the site of a Cistercian Abbey back in 1143, the house was originally built in 1833 by a gentleman farmer, and has been subsequently extended and lived in by many different families.  The present owners bought it back in the mid 1990s for just £400,000 (which by today's prices would be about £687,000 - an absolute steal for a 52 room gothic mansion!!) and have lovingly re-decorated it over many, many years, using the services of an artist, soft furnisher, and painter-decorator.  Their collections include vintage signs, china, hats, gramophones, dolls houses, vintage books, wine, taxidermy and much, much more.

Dressing Up and Dressing Down for Christmas

Have you trimmed up?  I'm not impertinently referring to your personal weight or fitness, I'm merely asking in the colloquial manner of my local area if you have decorated your Christmas tree yet?  In my family we range from those who put their decorations up at the end of November (my sisters) to those who only put their tree up on Christmas Eve (my Mum!).  We're somewhere in between in our household, though in recent years decorating has fallen later and later thanks to busy workloads and DIY.  Putting a tree up is a bit of a ritual, and I like to have Nat King Cole on the record player, mulled wine simmering on the stove, and to dress for the occasion.  This year I dressed down more than usual, wearing practical trousers for all of the hefting boxes and sitting on the floor that the task entails.  They're pretty fabulous trousers though, being my third pair of the House of Foxy's swing trousers, an absolute wardrobe staple for me, and this time in a cheery and festive red.  Paired with a pretty but cosy cardigan that I won in a contest from Voodoo Vixen, and my trusty 1950's reissued court shoes from Clarks, I felt very festive but was super comfortable.  The finishing touch was the lovely Poinsettia in my hair, that is actually one of a pair of shoe clips from Alternate Normality.

Vintage Home Christmas Decor Inspiration

It’s time to deck the halls!  If you are looking for a vintage theme to your Christmas home decor, I have three ideas outlined below.  Do you love the over-board colour of the 1950s, with all things kitsch?  Do you prefer to bring nature indoors for something more muted?  Or do you revel in the rich nostalgia of a Victorian Christmas?  Whatever your tastes. there is something for everyone - and on every budget.  For every theme, the best inspiration is freely available on the internet, but don't forget to rummage in your family photo albums too.

1) 1950s Kitsch

A 1950s Christmas is all about colour and shine, and embracing the novelty and the fun.  My mother still has some decorations from when she was a child in the early 1950s and they’re beautiful glass baubles in bright colours – magenta pink, cyan blue, gold and ruby red.  Blue fell out favour for a while, but luckily it's now back with a vengeance, no longer confined to being part of an ‘icy’ theme where it’s teamed with white and silver.  Don’t be afraid to throw some blue in with the reds, golds and greens.  When in doubt, go for every colour, rather than limiting it to a few!  Trees themselves could be silver, artificial twigs, or a real tree sprayed with paint, and they were loaded with baubles and draped with tinsel, to make sure they were as shiny and flammable looking as possible.

Christmas Spirit

I hope you're all enjoying the festive season?  It's time for a catch-up.  I have been a bit quiet over Christmas as I was ill.  Nothing serious, just a cold, but it knocked me for six and left me draped over the sofa for three days straight.  On Christmas Eve, as I started to feel unwell, our living room still looked like this, after all the epic DIY we've been undertaking:

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

It's been distinctively festive in Cardiff this year.  The city always puts on a good light display, lighting up the castle and the main shopping streets, and that annual favourite, the Winter Wonderland, is like a Christmassy beacon, with its open-air ice-rink and fairground rides.

What I Got for Christmas!

I'm a bit late in sharing this, but I had some wonderful gifts this year.  First of all was this Lindy Bop dress - I've always wanted an American diner type dress, and this fits the bill!  I love the heart shaped buttons, aren't they cute?  I hope the weather improves soon, so I can wear it.  We've had more hail, gales, and sideways rain.

I also had some great books - cook books, a Miss Marple short story collection, and a Ginger Rogers biography.  Still on the cooking theme, I had a lovely glass cakestand, and it's not pictured, but a cast iron Le Creuset type oven dish (at the time of photographing, it was in the oven containing a beef and red wine casserole!).  Other treats included Rose hand cream, Sailor Jerry's rum, 'The Artist' (which I am yet to see) and some gardening bits.

What treats did you all get for Christmas?

Thrifty Christmas Decorating

Christmas is over!  Time to start thinking about how you'd like to decorate your home next year.  No, I'm not kidding!  The sales are the perfect time to grab some half price Christmas trees, decorations, giftwrap and cards, assuming you have somewhere to store them until next year.  And, now that you've got all your decorations up is the time to notice any areas that you think are under-decorated (e.g. you didn't have anything to put on your mantlepiece), and to make a note of things you definitely have enough of (e.g. if you have about 10 strings of fairy lights, that's probably enough...).  Make some lists in a little notebook and then throughout the year you can buy things as you see them, rather than do a last-minute panic.

Cards & Giftwrap

I've just been to Marks and Spencer and Next, and picked up some beautiful cards for £1.50 and £1 respectively for boxes of 20.  Their Christmas sales tend to be in-store only rather than online, so worth popping in if you're passing.  How many cards did you send this year?  I sent far more than I'd planned, once I took into account my workplace, so had a last-minute panic of buying more cards, which wasn't ideal.  I keep a spreadsheet (!) that tells me which cards I've sent to which people in what year, to avoid duplication.  Now that all my work colleagues are on the spreadsheet, I know more accurately how many cards I'll need for next year.

I also stocked up on gift wrap, £1.75 reduced from £4 a roll for 4 metre quality metallic wrap.  My top tip would be to buy plain metallic colours if you can, because then you can use them for birthdays, leaving presents, weddings, and pretty much every other occasion you can think of.  For example, a plain gold paper with some white ribbon looks quite 'weddingy', or use a plain red for a Valentine's gift and use some heart-print ribbon.  Ribbon is incidentally also half price in the sales, Next had some pretty patterns.

Trees and Ornaments

Being our first Christmas in our new home, we only had some tiny student size trees, and wanted to splash out on a big 7 foot one for our living room.  The one we chose was the artificial Meribel Sheen from B&Q for £45.  If you think that next year you'd like to upgrade then search the sales now - the one we bought is now just £22.50, with all of the B&Q trees being half price.  Sometimes you'll find them even cheaper, one year we saw trees orginally priced at over £100 for just £10.

I should confess that this year we actually had two trees!  On the Saturday before Christmas, B&Q slashed the price of all real trees to just £5.  It would have been rude not to!  So, we had a lovely real tree for our dining room.

With all this additional foliage, we were short of some baubles.  We'd managed to cobble enough together for the artificial tree, but did have to buy some additional baubles for the real tree.  Fortunately Morrisons had bumper packs of 55 assorted finish baubles at half price, for just £2.50, in either red or gold.  Great value, we're really pleased with them.  I also made a few decorations, I'll tell you more about that in another post.

Don't forget to look on Freecycle or car boot sales from January onwards for second-hand decorations - this year we passed up on a 6 foot artificial tree and a bin bag full of decorations for £5 at a local car boot sale, and I've seen so many Christmas trees going for cheap or free online.  People tend to buy new ones, even if they have a perfectly good old one, so take advantage of it.

The Christmas Table

I already had a tablecloth and lots of candles and candlesticks, so the table didn't need much dressing.  For the napkins, I had a rummage in my sewing box and found some black and red tartan fabric that matched the red of the tablecloth and black of the placements.  I tied this around each napkin and added a sprig of fresh rosemary, and a gift tag with name written on, to double up as a placecard setting.

Dressing the napkins in this way is a really quick and cheap way to smarten up the table a bit.  If you have a basic, plain set of placemats and other table items, then you can use them all year round, and add some 'festive' touches as required around Christmas.  Perfect if you don't have the space to store an entire lot of Christmas-themed table settings.

If you were short of plates, serving bowls and serving spoons, or a big platter this year, then start keeping a look out for these items in the sales.  These are also the kind of things you find for next to nothing at the car boot sale or in charity shops.  I bought two large silver-plated serving spoons just before Christmas at the local car boot sale for 50p, and a beautiful old cake knife also for 50p.  I'd already noted that I was missing these items, and just remembered to keep looking for them.  Seek and ye shall find!

Lighting
Was your tree twinkly enough this year?  We have 3 sets of lights on our large tree but to be honest it could take more.  As soon as car boot sale season starts, keep an eye out for strings of fairy lights.  We must have at least a dozen sets of lights now, some of them outdoor lights.  None of them were more than £3, and they were collected over a whole year of charity shop rummaging and car boot sale lurking!

If you do have spare lights that don't need to go on the tree, consider using them elsewhere.  A glass vase or bowl filled with lights looks enchanting, as does hanging them over mantlepieces, above windows and along bookshelves.  Don't have any spare fairy lights?  Consider adding extra lamps to a room, but with low wattage bulbs, so that light is softer and more diffused - you'll be amazed at the difference in atmosphere it makes.  You can always use candelight too if you candles or tealights already, but it does require the utmost care if where they are placed (keep away from Christmas cards and decorations!), and you can't leave them unattended.  You can get battery operated tealights, but I don't know how good they are.

The Scent of Christmas
Next to lighting, smell is one of the quickest ways to evoke atmosphere.  I'm a huge fan of the highly scented candles from Yankee Candle and The White Company.  Both do Christmas themed scents, and they really do fill a room with the most wonderful aromas.  They're pretty pricey, but this is again something you can look for in the sales - I got a 'Apple and Pine Needles' Yankee Candle last year for around half price.  I tried a huge, and cheap, scented candle from Home Bargains but alas the scent doesn't fill the room, you have to be up close to get any fragrance.  Sometimes it's worth spending the money on something that really works.   Alternatives are to use an oil burner with scented oils in, or you can let the smell of your mulled wine waft through the house as you're heating it.

Christmas Food & Presents
This isn't about decorating, but I should add look out for nice presents and food in the sales!  Stash them away in a box or a drawer for next year.  Food items that are always on sale after Christmas include Christmas puddings (on sale now they should have a best before Spring 2015), and even things like bottles of mulled wine.  I always keep an eye out for items in the sales that would make nice gifts - angora socks (below from Next, £4 reduced from £10), boxes of chocolates (check the date on them), scarves, hats, bags and such like.  I tuck them away and use them for birthdays coming up in the next couple of months.

Are any of you preparing for next Christmas already by stashing things away?  I hope I'm not the only one stocking up on cards and giftwrap already!

The Christmas Tree

It's up!  Following on from my earlier post about the decoration debates with my other half, I am pleased to report that the trimming of the tree was fun, non-confrontational, and we both love the finished result.  In the end, we didn't have any budget left for new decorations so we had to combine what we already had - fortunately we both had mainly red and gold ornaments, so the theme was already there!  We scrabbled around a bit to get enough decorations, I even put a little bird cake decoration on the tree.  I let tinsel be put on, and coloured lights.  I supervised even distribution of ornaments and vetoed which ones could or could not be used.  We drank mulled wine out of tea cups.

The end result is quite traditional, and not at all interior-magazine perfect.  But it's our tree and I love it.

Seems like love trumps tinsel.

Christmas Cake Baked!

The first proper bit of baking in the new house's kitchen.  I always use Nigella Lawson's Christmas cake recipe, and follow her instructions of creating a little brown paper shield so that the top of the cake doesn't get burnt.  It works!

Have you made a Christmas cake yet?  What recipe do you follow?

Family Bake Off - We Won!!

I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but I was yet again crowned champion family baker, jointly this year with my partner, in the annual family Christmas competition!  This year there were only three entries - our festive cheesecake, my sister's stained glass window biscuits (hung on a tinsel tree she got her husband to make out of a kitchen roll holder!), and my Mum's lebkuchen.

We slightly overbaked the cheesecake, but it still tasted amazing.  It's from a Rachel Allen recipe with poached pears on a ginger base.  Yummy!

What I Got For Christmas!

I was a very lucky girl indeed this year, and have a veritable haul of goodies!  Minus the chocolate, which has already been devoured.  I've never been able to resist instant gratification.

Pictured below you will notice a set of pastry forks, a book on 1930s fashion, the new Angel Adoree book, a set of Veronica Lake film noirs, The Bletchley Circle, a mini photo frame, a retro vaseline tin, and an Agatha Christie book.  I also had two dresses (pictures to follow!), running gear, more lovely books and numerous 'stocking fillers'.

I should confess at this point that I bought myself some presents too, including a Besame mascara, a Cyd Charisse t-shirt, a red suspender belt from Kiss Me Deadly, and some posh moisturiser.  On checking my bank balance, January will be a month of living frugally to make up for all the treats.  But it was worth it.

What did you all get for Christmas?  I hope you were all as spoilt as I was!

x

Inspiration: Christmas Gifts for the Vintage Loving Lady

I find the high street quite stressful at this time of year, I popped in the other day to return some evening shoes to Debenhams and people continually barged into me and walked out in front of me.  Hurrumph!

So, if you have resolved to do the rest of your shopping online then this gift guide is for you - all of these items are available to order online/by mail.  You don’t have to go anywhere near the high street!

1) Fragrance

Tokyo Milk has a fantastic range of fragrances in unusual combinations and with quirky packaging that is sure to appeal.  My personal favourite is Gin & Rosewater (No. 12) – the rose fragrance is very classic, but the hit of gin is what makes this something completely different.  Widely available in the US but harder to find in the UK, you can purchase it at the Scruffy Little Cat here.  Another good bet for classic fragrances is good old Marks and Spencer - they have expanded their perfume range this year and it's well worth a look.

2) Accessories

It’s the accessories that can make or break a vintage-inspired outfit and I personally can never have enough gloves, hats & scarves!  The V&A has a cosy collar in chic lace on wool.

H&M has this leopard print faux fur collar for just £7.99.  Order it online here.

H&M also has some nice suede gloves in bright colours, for just £14.99

3) Stationery

Stationery is another area where you can’t really go wrong.  This chic Art Deco style address book at Past Times is rather lovely.

And what about some proper old-fashioned good quality writing paper and envelopes?  Some companies like Honey Tree Publishing offer a personalisation service, from around £1 per sheet.  I would love to have some stationery with my name at the top, how glamorous!

4) Old Hollywood Memorabilia

I like the look of are these, also from the V&A.  A fabulous poster featuring Marlene (£10), and a life-size cut-out of Rita (£40)!

5) Knickers

A lady can never, ever, have enough.  Support British made undercrackers by purchasing a pair of Kinky Knickers, championed by Mary Portas.  They were £10 each, now down to £7.50 with free delivery from ASOS.  The packaging is very endearing - a perfect stocking filler.

So, I hope those suggestions help or just provide you with yet another item for your own wish list!  I have personally been adopting the 'one-for-them, one-for-me' approach to Christmas shopping.

Inspiration: Vintage Christmas Home Decor

It’s time to deck the halls!  Here are three vintage style ideas for decorating your home this Christmas.  I’ve been asking some members of the older generation for their memories of childhood to help me come up with the themes.

1)  1950s Kitsch

A 1950s Christmas is all about colour and shine.  My mother still has some decorations from when she was a child in the early 1950s and they’re beautiful glass baubles in bright colours – hot pink, cyan blue, gold and ruby red.  Blue fell out favour for a while, but luckily it's now back with a vengeance, no longer confined to being part of an ‘icy’ theme where it’s teamed with white and silver.  Don’t be afraid to throw some blue in with the reds, golds and greens.

Christmas circa 1950

Photo credit: Viellies Annonces on Flickr (Some rights reserved)

Paper chains made from vivid coloured sugar paper (or even newspaper!) were also popular, and today is an ideal pre-Christmas activity to keep children occupied.  If you don’t have any, borrow some, and then you’re also helping out a friend so that they can get their Christmas shopping done with the children out of the way.

Photo credit: Lori on Flickr (some rights reserved)

Although the 1950s was the first decade in which the television would have been more widely available (from the middle of the decade onwards), it wouldn’t have really been a big feature of Christmas day.  More likely, a fully stocked cocktail cabinet and a few classic board games would have been the order of the day!

For 1950’s style gift wrapping ideas, I refer you to a very amusing post by Jen of ‘Jen but Never Jenn’, where she chronicles her attempts at a 1950’s Christmas.

Mollie and Fred had these 1950's style paper doilies (pack of 36, £3.99), I'm not sure they still stock them but you can probably find similar else where.

Original vintage baubles can be found on Etsy, but bright coloured baubles are all over the high street too, what about this great vintage style one from M&S?  (£4)

2)  Victorian

A Victorian Christmas is an elegant, ordered, elaborate affair.  In a Victorian theme your main material will be printed paper, as this was an age when printing techniques took a giant leap forward, making colour printed materials accessible to the masses.  There are plenty of Victorian Christmas images on the internet, or even in your word processing programme’s clipart section.  All can be printed on to card or paper, and then used to make paper garlands, crackers, greeting cards, or strung with ribbon to make tree ornaments.  The BBC has a great site ‘Make Your Own Victorian Christmas’ with tutorials.  Just don't be surprised if Father Christmas is in green, not red!

  

Photo credit: Artvintage1800s on Flickr (Public domain)

Victorian Christmas trees would have been adorned with candles, but today for health and safety I would advise using electric imitations.  There’s a lot of choice nowadays, and lights are quite inexpensive.  If you stick to clear bulbs it will look a bit more authentic than the coloured ones.  As well as handmade ornaments, Victorian trees would have been adorned with sweets, fruit and small gifts.  To add a bit of bling to your tree without using the Victorian feel, what about using old jewellery threaded on ribbon?  The more ostentatious the better!

A good source for Victorian inspired decorations is Past Times.  The physical stores closed down in the UK recently, but there is still an online store stocking items such as this decoupage bauble for £4.

3)  Natural

A natural Christmas is simple, homemade and brings Winter foliage indoors.  This has to be one of the cheapest options but will involve you rummaging in hedgerows in the cold, armed with a pair of secateurs!  My sister fell in the hedge at the bottom of my parents’ garden last year whilst trying to retrieve some holly for me.  In an ‘au-naturel’ theme use sprays of holly, pine cones, sprigs of mistletoe and poinsettia plants, adding ribbon scraps from your sewing box here and there.  Dried slices of orange or lemon from the kitchen arranged with cinnamon sticks tied with string can be added to wreaths or mantelpiece boughs.  And of course, a real tree will be the centrepiece.  You can now buy varieties that don’t shed needles if you’re worried about the vacuuming!  Gingerbread shapes hung with string or ribbon on a tree is a good choice for a natural theme.

A snow effect can be achieved with a dusting of icing sugar or flour through a sieve –fake snow sometimes has chemicals in, so this is a good option for households with pets (just don’t get it wet!).  Also please remember that caution should be used with bringing berries into the house as the majority are poisonous, and would be highly toxic to both pets and small children!  Alternatively, ‘berries’ can be mimicked with buttons, or mini pom poms that are widely available in craft stores.

Photo credit: Ron Cogswell on Flickr (some rights reserved)

As for gift-wrapping, presents in my parents’ childhood were simply wrapped in brown paper/newspaper and string, or would be hidden in a woollen stocking.  I remember receiving a bicycle once in my own childhood that wasn’t wrapped (too big!) but I had to follow a piece of string around the house to find it.  Remember that it’s the anticipation with children, and a similar treasure-hunt type activity to find a present will give more thrills than the pricey wrapping paper (which gets ripped off in seconds).  Or what about a lucky dip?  Find a huge cardboard box and fill with shredded newspaper, hiding toys in the layers.  Games to draw out the present-opening process will make it much more fun – I remember being with some of my nieces one Christmas and they tore through a pile of presents at such speed that the whole thing was over in under 5 minutes!  A bit of an anticlimax.

All of these themes can be done on the cheap, or you can really blow the budget with them!  If time to make your own decorations is something you’re short of, how about hosting a Christmas drinks and crafts evening for some of your friends to help you make some?

What's your vintage Christmas style?  I know some of you must have your decorations up already, let's see some photos!