Decorating for Christmas 2018

FINALLY!

I am sure I’ve been counting down the days forever waiting for it to be time to put the Christmas decorations up! Despite being crazy for Christmas, I’m a strictly 1st December gal when it comes to decorations (might be something to do with it being my birthday the day before!) music, food and general excitement are all fair game the moment it hits September, tho.

I am so, so excited to have a real Christmas tree this year. We have always been a real-christmas-tree family, but until now, we never had the means to pick up/transport/display/dispose of a big, real tree since we moved away from home. This year we took the train to St Albans to the Pins and Needles pop up store and honestly, so far I can’t fault this tree. It’s so even and beautiful, it smells divine and their store was even a measly 3 minute walk from the train station - meaning we skipped the delivery fee and took it on an adventure with National Rail for it’s journey home to our house! Not sponsored, just literally so pleased to have a real tree for Christmas at last.

We had the guy who netted our tree for us saw a few inches off the trunk before we took it away, and our stand is the kind that holds water so we can keep it hydrated - I’m hoping this technique will keep it going right through until Christmas Day. The stand is less than beautiful, though, so to disguise it I used this tip and picked up a big, shallow basket from La Redoute. I also invested in some copper wire, LED lights this year, which are much less bulky than traditional lights, potentially less of a fire hazard, and much easier to mould into the right position.

I am very much into the scandi paper star vibe, so I copy-catted the look with some stars from ebay, command hooks on the ceiling and a bit of transparent nylon thread to make them look like they’re floating!

I also picked up some branches of Christmas tree again (last year I fashioned them into a teeny “tree” for our kitchen) but this year I celebrated the fact that we actually have a staircase by creating a natural garland for the bannister. I bulked it out with lights, fake berries (From Tiger), dried Honesty from my mum’s garden and a decoration or two.

Upstairs I kept it low-key, although having a real tree this year gave me an excuse to put last year’s LED number up in the studio. festiv-ing up the background of my insta stories for the forseeable! I filmed a Christmas House tour where you can see that - plus details of all the decor - if you’re more of a video-content kinda person so be sure to check that out below!