My friend and awesome food writer Jenny Chandler made me chuckle this week , she posted a picture of one of the corners in her lovely Bristol Home. She can’t do minimalism! I am kind of with her on that. I love that Scandi pared down pale style, but I just cant achieve it because “stuff’ creeps in !
I would dearly love a neutral / natural pared down Christmas - but the rest of the tribe would think I had lost my marbles and a revolt would ensue! How I would love all of this pale furniture and simple decor!! I really like the idea of small living trees in galvanised buckets and rustic pots and I think this is something I will take on board and buy a couple of small trees in pots which can live in the garden for the rest of the year and be brought indoors for Christmas. If you live near Stroud theres a fabulous chap at the farmers market who sells an array of wonderful vintage tin tubs.
To be fair I have pared it down somewhat, theres a ban on tinsel downstairs - I don’t care what they decorate their own rooms with ! - in Bellas case theres a pink plastic tree shes had since she was 3! There isn’t a coloured light in sight and I do tend to use lots of natural foliage and mercury glass.
Anyway I thought I would pull together some ideas - mainly garnered from Pinterest and the wonderful Miss Mustard seed blog (oh how I would love Marian to come and get me shipshape for Christmas - or in fact for any day!!) I hope these simple ideas will give you some inspiration for easy holiday decor that is actually achievable at home and on a budget.
I do love a wreath, I tend to favour a natural style one. Normally at this time of year Kate of Waterlane workshops and I are to be found flailing around in the hedgerows foraging for greenery for our popular wreath making workshops here in Stroud. Sadly this year we weren’t able to do it, but we will be back next year . If you want to have a go yourself, you could buy a base from the garden centre. I noticed our local Morissons had some fir bases with a not very nice ribbon, but you could detatch the bow and then customise it with extra greenery, berries, winter herbs, pine cones and foraged finds. My top tip is to follow one direction, don’t try adding bunches of things willy nilly or it wont look like a professional job! Flow the additions round the base in the same direction - as in the 2 images on the left. If you want to keep it super simple, buy a metal star decoration and tie a bunch of greenery to it with some nice ribbon our trim, you could add an old bell, or a tiny mercury bauble.
All of the decorating ideas above are really budget friendly easy DIY ideas. Kate and I make the candle jars every year at our workshops, they are super for a cheap impactful way to decorate for a party. - I know we wont be having any parties this Christmas but I am still going to please myself by making lots of nice decorations so that I can admire them while I am having g week off work!!! These images are from Pinterest, and one proviso I would add is that I would never put greenery in with the candle as I think its a fire hazard, you could put a fake candle in with greenery (Sarah Raven has some fab ones on her website) or just use the greenery tied onto the outside of the jar. We often wrap old jam jars in music paper or old book pages with stars or hearts cut out and put a tea light inside, these look super on a mantle in a row. Big kilner jars or pickle jars look fabulous lining the driveway or path to your house. Rescue some wine bottles from the recycling - clear or pale green ones work best, tie a sprig of greenery and a small cone around the neck and push a candle in and you have an instant candelabra collection. If you have creative or amenable kids then the little paper star garlands and bunting are super easy to make , you can buy star punches from craft shops or on line and they make cutting out stars much easier! However if not just download a star template on the internet and pick up a couple of old books in a charity shop and chop multiple pages at a time into star shapes. To make a hanging garland simply set your sewing machine onto a running stitch and sew the stars across the middle with a few cm gap in between each. To make a wire wreath or garland find some fine gauge bendy wire and using 2 stars trap the wire between 2 stars and glue the stars together with the wire firmly trapped between them. To make the bunting simply cut triangles of old book pages or music paper and stitch them across some narrow cotton tape or jute string.
I tend to keep it relatively simple with flowers over the Christmas period, I always seem to gravitate towards pale colours, so usually choose some highly scented lillies or paper whites , or a few streams of amaryllis. I really like the idea of just simple branches of greenery in big jars, a simple stem of eucalyptus, or scented pine would work beautifully with a stem of amaryllis. Growing bulbs in tank vases or old jelly moulds or tin tubs works really well too. I love the picture on the left from Miss Mustard Seed. She has used a cake stand and layered it up with old teacups with candles in and greenery and nuts, this is a really simple but effective idea for a table centrepiece or would look fabulous on a hall table in an entry way.
My final thoughts are on wrapping. Did you know most commercial wrapping paper can’t be recycled? This is because it has either foil or glitter on it or is plastic based. I notice that Waitrose have committed to a range of fully recyclable paper this year. However its super easy and super cheap to make presents look really special with just a roll of brown paper and some nice ribbon or butchers string. My friend Helen made me laugh when she was telling me about her wrapping paper - I think its lasted her about 17 years! she bought a roll of brown paper online without noticing the size , when it arrived she possibly could have rolled it to Bristol without a break! But a roll of brown paper is great, its totally recyclable - especially if you use paper tape too, and you can decorate it in lots of ways. I love the idea of black and white photo gift tags , you don’t need to chop up treasured photos , just print out any fun ones from your phone in black and white (I sometimes use pic frame app to put 9 together in a grid and then print them on to one sheet to save the effort of resizing things) . If you want a vintage look print them onto brown craft card or a sheet of brown paper. Tie your parcels with red and white butchers twine or some pretty ribbon. A sprig of greenery and a Christmas decoration is another lovely idea for a cost effective and pretty wrapping idea. Old book pages make pretty packaging for small gifts like jewellery boxes or soaps, and if you have the time and inclination using your sewing machine makes a really fab package; wrap your parcel leaving plenty of space at the ends , then instead of folding and taping the ends stitch them shut - you need to make sure you’ve left enough space and don’t clonk your needle down onto whatever inside the parcel. You could have some fun with this by changing the thread colour to red or bright pink and matching some ribbon to the thread colour. Depending on your sewing skills you could even stitch a simple tag in as you stitch across the edge. Remember you will need to change your needle when you go back to sewing fabric as the paper will blunt it. Finally having discovered the wonders of posca paint pens this year, I will be enlisting the kids to make ‘gingerbread house packaging using brown paper bags . Posca pens look like white paint but you can draw with them like you can a metallic pen - they are fab!!! I love the idea of using old cardboard boxes to make decorative star or heart gift tags which look like gingerbreads. I think this could keep children amused for at least 10 mins!!!
If you are decorating, cooking or wrapping for Christmas this weekend have lots of fun ! Next week my favourite home made Christmas gifts,….