The decorations are up!

Growing up, our decorations went up on Christmas eve, and came down on twelfth night, despite us all being atheists. They were also restricted to a tree in traditional colours, and strictly no tacky plastic things hanging off the ceiling. So nowadays, as far as I'm concerned, December is all about feeling festive in the traditional British, rather pagan sense - feasting, drinking, keeping warm, cuddling up together and decorating your hovel in the twinkliest, gaudiest decorations known to man in order to ring in the changing of the seasons.


These are the same decorations I blogged about last year, I just wish I could get a better picture of the tree - without the flash it's way too dark, and with it it looks matte pink with no baubles visible. In fact it looks lovely and has a warm glow from my vintage bubble lights and muliticoloured fairy lights, it's adorned with loads of tiny metallic baubles in a rainbow of colours, plus some lovely pink deer, shiny glass robots and a huge flamingo wearing a Santa hat.


Last weekend we went to the Christmas markets in town before going to see 'My week with Marilyn', here we are being cold and drinking mulled wine. You can also see Paul's glorious Moustache grown for Movember - you can still sponsor it here should you wish to!


One day, my Christmas house will look as beautiful as this!


Found on The Girl's Girl, originally from BoopsieDaisy's amazing Flickr stream.


Next year I'm also planning to scour ebay for out-of-season vintage Christmas decorations at bargain prices and make a beautiful bauble wreath like this, I think it's a lovely way to preserve them and show them off.

At last, I return!

Hello people of blogland, I am delighted to say that I finally have my computer back, after three weeks of stone-age living while my laptop spent time at some enormous Tesco corporate repair centre, presumably partaking in electronic enemas and resting its shattered nerves. Apparently they had to replace the motherboard, I'm just glad it is still under warranty, I can do without having to shell out hundreds of pounds on basically the most expensive replacement part a computer could ever need.

I've got plenty of news and completed sewing projects to show you, but unfortunately since the government banned all light bulbs over 40 watts and I am now lit by the dingiest, cheapest bulbs available, my house is no longer suitable for photography after dusk and you will have to wait until grim, frosty daylight slithers over us for me to capture images of the aforementioned sewing projects.

In the meantime here is a picture of the fabric I'm using to make this year's Christmas dress, and the vintage pattern I'm using.


I think Americans call this type of fabric doublekint, I'm not sure if we have another name for it here - it's not something you see commonly in fabric shops in the UK. The houndstooth side will make up the body of the dress, and I'm going to flip it and use the plain black side for the collar. I'm also modifying it to have three-quarter length sleeves as this will be a Winter dress.


If you fancy this design and happen to be a vintage size 20 1/2 (41-35-45) or are able to resize patterns, there is another copy of the pattern available on etsy here. Mine has the cute 50s envelope too!

Oh, Kitschmas Tree!

This weekend, I put up my Christmas tree. In our house growing up, despite being atheists and the tree actually being a totemic emblem of Europe's pagan past, oddly religious rules were adhered to in that the tree was never put up until Christmas eve, was to be decorated tastefully in red and gold, and was generally low-key.

The trees I remember most from my childhood however, were my paternal grandparents'. They always had a real fir tree which immediately started to turn brown and drop needles all over the carpet, and was covered in amazing 1950s decorations in bright jewel colours. Little glass birds with long tails, baubles like gleaming Fabergé eggs, crackers and nets of chocolate coins hidden inside the tree, and my favourite thing of all - bubble lights! These were apparently America's biggest selling Christmas lights from the 1930s - 1980s, but were and still are very rare in the UK. I was always amazed by the glowing tubes of colourful liquid, bubbling away dangerously among the branches like a mad scientist's test tubes.


So, seeing as my dad has lain claim to my grandparents' set, I purchased some from US eBay and bought a transformer so they wouldn't explode when exposed to UK voltages.


Atop my tree sit a small red flocked deer, and a bizarre long-legged elf from the 1940s. These were my nanna's on my mum's side.


The other decorations are a mixture of shiny blown glass B-movie style robots, this lovely crocodile which I bought at the German Christmas market a few years ago, multicoloured mini baubles and a generous sprinkling of glittery and metallic deer!