Last minute crafty decorations

If you're snowed in and haven't been quite as organised as you'd planned, it isn't too late to decorate your tree/house/table beautifully for the big day. Our tree's stylish silver and white decor scheme has been immeasurably improved by a few multi-coloured, splodgy and very glittery decorations handmade by my 17 month old niece. Here are some of my favourite decoration ideas, found on Etsy. The best bit is, they give you a good reason to sit inside and not venture out into the sleet.

Decorations made from old comic book pages (above).

Bird garland made from newspaper stuck onto cardboard, strung onto kitchen string or ribbon.

If all else fails, write on some citrus fruit with a felt pen and stick them in a big bowl.

Or decorate some eggs - who said this was only for Easter?

Happy Christmas.

Kitchen is finished!

Well, almost... finally we've got all our appliances installed and working, and we're using our lovely new kitchen. We definitely learned a lot along the way, but I am very happy with it overall. My only regret (maybe) is not going for a standalone fridge freezer... but then, those aren't very big and we do have a monster amount of space for chilling things now, which is fantastic.

Alternative Xmas tree

This is a cool alternative Christmas tree I found over on Houzz. Perfect for those who don't have space for a real tree, can't afford decorations or are simply not feeling too Christmassy...

Wonderful wreaths

For our Christmas party we had the lovely Annabel who has her own bespoke floristry business, teach us how to make lovely Christmas wreaths. And it was surprisingly easy! Having made a 'real' wreath I'm totally over making a bauble wreath... but I will be posting a step-by-step guide to making your own wreath tomorrow so stay tuned.

Jenna and Danielle get stuck into foliage and decorations.

Finance manager Steve is pretty proud of his creative efforts.

Our efforts turned out surprisingly well for first timers I think you'll agree.

Ho ho ho

I finally decorated the tree. Having sat naked in the corner of the living room for almost a week, it's now happily baubled-up and shedding needles all over the floor. Needs more baubles perhaps??

How to start an art collection

Buying art is a passion of mine, but I don't know much about it - or what to collect, other than what I fall in love with. I've never tried to collect with a view to 'investing', but a couple of the pieces I own have turned out to be good investments. I bought a small painting at the Affordable Art Fair a few years back, by a latin American artist who had had some good solo exhibitions as well as group shows in Argentina. A few years later, the same artist's work seems to be selling for at least four times what I paid for my painting. Not that I'd ever sell it...

One of my other favourite painters, Jimmie James is holding a sale of his works which means you can pick up an original for the bargain price of $100. Check out his list of paintings for sale here. You can't have these two though, 'cos they're mine!



Here's a good video on how to start an art collection:

Say it with personalized stationery

It seems to be a peculiarly American thing to stamp your initials all over your tote bag/pillow cases/boxer shorts - which is a little too much for me - but I really do love the idea of personalized stationery. At Christmas it's especially lovely to make your card stand out from all the others which plop onto the doormat (if anyone is sending real paper cards anymore, that is).

So today I've been looking at personalized stationery. My favourite is Fabulous Stationery, whose cards are exactly what they claim to be. Last year I ordered some of their holiday cards and they were great quality, and not too expensive. They have tons of graphic, slightly retro designs which definitely get the festive season off to a stylish start. (See above and below).

Those personalized family cards with photos of smiling/gurning babies don't always do it for me so if you prefer to play it safer, you can't go wrong with a beautifully stylized portrait of your family like these by Etsy-er Saratams.


Another favourite is Moo cards. You can either print from your own images, or choose from their range of designers; currently featuring very cool illustrators like Rachel Cave


and Jo Askey. I've ordered customised post cards from Moo this year as our holiday cards - great for the environment too, as they use 60% less waste to create then normal cards, and NO envelopes!

If even that is a bit too saccharine for you, how about some classic initials? Fancy but not too blue-blood, these cards by Etsy-er DingbatPress would work at Christmas or any time of the year. After all, even in the age of email we all love getting a card through the post, right?

Dear Santa...

We decorated the office last night and now I'm in the festive spirit, so I thought I'd put together my wishlist of all the things I'd love Santa to bring me this year.. hint, hint!

And what do you know, it turns out I'm obsessed with birds and organising things! I swear, these were put together with no theme in mind but it's interesting when you see them all together in a moodboard like this... perhaps we should all make moodboards to determine what's on our sub-conscious mind :) Happy wishlisting!

To see details fo the products, and where to buy click here.