Friday 14 December 2007

It's Christmas time!

I love Christmas! Only 11 days to go now and I am really beginning to feel festive. I think Christmas is even more fun now that I have little children of my own; like many parents I am conscious of making it magical for them (and me!).

We have "written" letters to Santa. The inverted commas are because we did them just before Rosie's fourth birthday and, although she can manage a passable 'Rosie' she's not quite up to a full scale Santa letter yet. So instead we took the Argos catalogue and other Christmas brochures apart, got out the scissors and the glue and did collages.

Last night we sent them to Santa via the medium of smoke. Brian opened up the wood burning stove and popped the letters onto its roaring logs. Hannah and Rosie told the resulting smoke that they had been good girls and mentioned the specific presents they would most like to have (Mummy took notes).

Then there was the tree. We built it together - because of the wood burning stove which, at full throttle, is hotter than lava - we have an artificial tree which has a central stem and poke in branches. It isn't the same as a real tree - but we tried a real tree once and had a naked tree standing above a pile of needles by December 2nd.

Once the tree was made the girls elbowed me aside and grabbed the box of decorations. I stood at a safe distance, just popping in to remind them to decorate the back too.



Meanwhile I fashioned a wreath out of holly, ivy and some rather voluptuous viburnum, added some fairy lights and baubles and hung it on the door. The icicle lights are up, as are the twinkling lights on the beech hedge and we're nearly ready for Santa.

All that remains now is to make some reindeer food (bird seed, loads of glitter, mix up, then sprinkle outside on the driveway on Christmas Eve - the glitter disappears eventually.) and hang up our stockings.


10 comments:

  1. I absolutely love your tree! It's soooo Christmassy. And gorgeous door decoration too.

    Crystal xx

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  2. That's so beautiful I want to come and spend Christmas at your house. Not fair! I want to tear out pages from the Argos catalogue and put them in the fire too!

    Have a big hug for being so Christmassy. Now I'm off tomoz to buy a tree and we hope the lights still work from last year!

    Fxx

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  3. What a lovely Christmas you will be having. It is so different once little ones grow up!

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  4. All that you have decribed in words and shown in pictures, well, it is all just really helping me to get into a great Christmastime mood.

    Thank you!

    Love the idea of sending messages to Santa up the chimney. We did not have that here in the States, even those of us with fireplaces and chimneys. We just sent out Santa letters to him in the post.

    xo

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  5. It must be lovely there with two little girls in the house. Sadly we have no littlies to create a bit of magic for. The tree looks wonderful.

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  6. Sounds and looks great. Oddly enough the picture of outside your house looks incredibly like ours. I wonder if it really does or if it was just the angle of the photo? Lovely wreath too. I am intending to do one for the cottage and to buy one from my next door neighbour who makes lovely ones for the house. Had one last year and cant bring myself to say no this year!

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  7. Sounds lovely PM and it does make it even better when you have little ones. Even our big ones revert to babyhood because of the mania of the younger lot! xx

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  8. Christmas is really for children, it is magical then, everything looks lovely, I know you will have a great time.

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  9. You are a good mum, when mine were that old, I wouldn't let them loose on the tree, as it would have ended up a tatt-fest, However, the girls have developed very good taste and now do the tree all by themselves,
    I too get totally frustrated by cars not passing in the right place and not pulling over when the obstruction is on their side grrrr

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  10. I love your enthusiasm...and your decorations! I hope you hvae a wonderful Christmas with your family. I may steal your Reindeer food idea!

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