Happy Christmas from Australia

It's Christmas eve and we are about to trek off to spend time with my family over Christmas. There will be two little nephews running around all weekend, LOTS of food, bucketloads of fun, and a mountain of love. I'm looking forward to it.

I saw these cute Australian themed cards on Jam Tales.  Love them and wish I'd found them earlier!

Have a wonderful Christmas wherever you are in the world.  May it be filled with all sorts of love, extra peace and oodles of joy.

What are you drinking?

 Loving this latest print from the Paris versus New York blog. The Cosmo is looking pretty good to me!

Magic Christmas baubles

I love these handblown glass Christmas decorations from the Balcony Gardener. They look like they belong in a fairyland at the bottom of the garden.

This gorgeous website is full of lovely bits and pieces for the garden and balcony.  If you're looking for unique Christmas presents for people who enjoy the outdoors or appreciate a smattering of greenery around the house you could try something like the bungee bird feeder or taterpot or the blossom bird bath.

All simply delightful!

Image source: The Balcony Gardener

Ultimate creative space

I have discovered my ultimate creative space thanks to Lovelace & Co.

The next version of my home office is going to look like something along these lines. I especially love the blackboard as I'm always wanting to scribble things down.  How could you not create amazing things at a desk like this!?

A red bird at Christmas

When I first moved to America, I remember going for a walk just after Christmas time, and saw this fiery red flash of colour fly by me on the dreary grey day.  I actually managed to get a few pictures, but nothing close up so I could see what type of bird this was.  I hadn't really thought about that day until now, when I was searching for my book-club's book for December to download on my kindle.  There on the front cover was the red bird - a Cardinal!

As I was searching through Etsy for some gift ideas just now, I came across this beautiful painitng by lauracarter.  It looks just like I remember that day, the red berries, and this beautiful red bird!!

Back to Christmas basics

 

Remember home made Christmas decorations?  You know the ones you used to make at school or on the weekend using foil, glitter (lots of glitter), gold and silver pens, cotton wool, and I'm sure toilet rolls made an appearance.  Very messy but very fun!

Paper chains were my speciality and we used to make them as loooong as possible and string them all over the house.  Highly festive for us and I'm sure mum was happy it kept holiday crazed children busy for hours at a time.

I found a great story on Apartment Therapy about nearly 'no-cost' Christmas decorations including paper chains (see above photo) and cut out paper snowflakes (I so remember making those!).  It's definitely worth wandering over to the website to have a look.

Image source: All via Apartment Therapy

A Creative Christmas

I'm trying to do some cute creative crafty things for Christmas.  This is my first one for the holiday season - a little Christmas tree pin to wear to work!  Inspired from one of my favourite crafty blogs - The Purl Bee!

...It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas! :)

On the first day of Christmas...

It's December!  And in this part of the world it is supposed to be summer today.  A look out the window shows rain and gloomy skies, I could be anywhere in Europe (although it is apparently knee deep in ice and snow at the moment, so not really).  Where's the sun? I even had slippers on at one stage this morning!

No matter - today is the day to bring out those advent calenders. I LOVE these and always try to have one on the go. Although I rarely start them on time and usually end up with discounted ones halfway through December.  This is fine with me as the result is generally one big chocolate feast to make up for all the days I've missed. 

Now if I was super organised (and this will be a goal for future Christmas's) I would make sure I had one of these fabulous advent calenders that Babble.com very kindly brought to my attention. I am so in love with the Pottery Barn advent calendar. It couldn't be too hard to make...could it?

Pottery Barn Burlap Sack Advent Calendar

The Boxes on the Wall and the Baby Socks Garland ideas from Martha Stewart

Muslin pouches from Nuvonova on Etsy

Image sources: All via babble.com