Festive Decorations!

Its that time of year! Time to decorate the house, get the Advent calendars out, wrap presents, make mince pies, Christmas cakes, order the meat for Christmas day and dig out that Christmas album! Something we certainly enjoy in this house and we got the decorating done yesterday. But as I dressed our tree, I did so with decorations I had made myself. It was satisfying to do after all the hours of effort. But why put in all the effort in the first place? A number of reasons.

First, and foremost, my daughter. When Christmas rolled around for my son, he wasn't mobile the first time, and old enough to understand 'no' the second. My daughter was mere weeks old last year, but this year she is a boisterous furniture walking 13 month old who is not yet responding to instruction in any way and chews everything like you might expect a puppy to! Shoes are most definitely not safe. I know she will be at the decorations and even shatter proof baubles can be crunched with little teeth and I have awful visions of her with a mouthful of plastic shards. That's my first reason. Safety.

Second admittedly is cost. I can buy soft fabric decorations now, but for enough for a whole tree, even with finding them as cheap as they come, I could easily spend over £1 a decoration. Yikes! The materials are far, far cheaper.

Thirdly, I wouldn't know exactly what bought ones are made of if Princess Lulu decides to eat them.

And fourth, well, shabby chic is in! Great for me! So off I toddled to get a tonne of materials (at a much smaller cost and got ready to go.

Felt, crochet cotton in white, glitter crochet thread, buttons, and I already had a tonne of polyester fibre filling.

Then I created templates. I am not ashamed to admit some were made by drawing round the children's toys! But some were also free hand. Cut out of card I was ready to draw round and cut them out.

Then its a case of getting my hand sewing going. I have no idea how many hours of sewing in white crochet cotton I did, adding loops of metallic cotton to hang them with. But in the end, I finished with 36 decorations all told!

I was really quite pleased with them, but it wasn't till I had help dressing the tree that I realised just how much the hard work had paid off. I had beautiful decorations that no-one else would have at a price I could afford, and combined with some candy canes and simple beads, the tree looks wonderful. The candy canes might not last, but my decorations will last for years. One very happy Kat!

I hope your Christmas preparations are going as well as mine! Till next time!