festiving up

Festiving! I'm making up words! It's Chri-i-i-i-i-istmas!  Here's my finished wreath, hanging on our front door.  I love it - so bright and Christmassy.  The flowers are made from Quality Street wrappers that have been folded up origami style.  Myself and my parents inexplicably folded these a couple of Christmases ago and I knew there would be a project worth saving them for eventually.  I ended up attaching these with colourful bobble headed pins since it added to the floral effect and injected even more colour...because MORE colour was obviously what this project needed?!  So I haven't busted out my glue gun yet, but I have another wee project lined up that hot glue will be essential for, so I'll still get my glue gun fix!  I suppose it took a while to origami the sweetie wrappers, but assembling the wreath was a quick, easy and satisfying job.

 Another quick and fun Christmas project this week was the making of these gift tags using festive rubber stamps that I treated myself to from a fancy stationery shop in Geneva - angels, stars, clouds and dots.  Can you call rubber stamping making?  I think you must be able to because it still gave me that "I made this" feeling of satisfaction.  And it made gift wrapping more fun!

Since I pursue crafty projects on a whim, I almost always end up working amid this sort of mess and mayhem.  I'm hoping to have a dedicated crafting corner set up in the not-too-distant future, so hopefully scenes like this will be a thing of the past.  Or at least confined to one out-of-the-way corner!

 Our Christmas decorating this year is pretty much confined to the living room, other than the front-door wreath and a couple of items in Dulcie's room.  Our fireplace (pardon the blurry photo) is looking quite sweet with our childhood Santa and reindeer decoration, some cards and a garland I made from our vintage baubles (too delicate for our tree with a toddler and two cats around) and some paper angels.

And our tree, as ever, fills me with delight.  I love unpacking all the decorations I've accumulated over the years and adding to the collection with a few new items.  This year it was particularly sweet to rediscover all the lovely decorations I was sent in last year's handmade decoration swap.  My new decorations this year included this fabulous Mexican pig from MEXTLIMEX on Etsy, which is so bright and cheerful and festive in its own weird way!  The mat under the tree is another new addition this year, a wee £1 bargain from the charity shop that is making me so very happy.  Best £1 ever spent?!

 Within five minutes of dusting off the tree, I had been accused of control freakery, but I ask you, would a control freak allow her three-year-old to hang two decorations on the same branch?!  Apparently this is Mummy Christmas tree and Baby Christmas tree, so they have to stay together :)  Dulcie is constantly moving all the decorations around, but the random nature of the tree and its decorations means that doesn't matter a jot.  And I quite like discovering a leopard-print bauble hanging on the phone when it rings etc!  Dulcie's love for the tree is IMMENSE and very sweet.  I'm not looking forward to her reaction when we take it down...