An Autumn Garland

In our old house I used to make garlands for our mantel all the time. They were invariably quick and easy; paper, card, felt balls, pine cones, feathers, crochet - I used to have a lot of fun creating seasonal arrangements on that mantel. Our fireplace was cream marble and always seemed cold to me, as though it needed lots of decorating and warming up, but at least the neutral colour of the mantel and wall behind it always made a good backdrop for a display. (You can see lots of photos of our old fireplace by clicking on the "mantel" label on the right hand side.)

I don't know why but I stopped doing that with our new mantel in this house. Partly it's the length of that huge slab of oak, and partly it's the funny lopsided chimney breast, but I still don't feel like I've really sussed out how to dress or style our current mantelpiece. A few things dotted there look lost, so I tend to go for the more is more approach, and just fill the space. I don't know if that really works either. 

But I felt it was time for a bit of seasonal prettification of the fireplace and an autumn garland was in order. And while I was making it I remembered how much fun there is to be had in once of these quick (and easy) craft projects. So much of what I make now takes weeks at least, usually months - sometimes a few years! - so it was fun to have made something in a couple of hours.  

I gathered together all my oddments of felt and chose my colours. I had a mixture of the acrylic stuff you buy in places like Hobbycraft combined with off cuts of pure wool felt. The wool felt is immeasurably nicer in colour, tone and quality, and has a slight stiffness to it which makes for a good shape on the garland, but I just made the best with what I had. Then I sketched some leaf shapes and cut them out on scraps of paper. 

Pinning the paper templates to the felt, I drew round them in fading ink pen then cut them out.

I threaded a needle with two plies of brown embroidery thread and stitched through the stalk of each leaf. 

Then hang in your chosen spot (mantel, mirror, dresser, shelf, banister....) and admire. A while ago I tapped a couple of small picture hooks into either end of the piece of oak above our stove and I use this to secure anything I hang there. 

Happy autumn crafting!

Home For Christmas

This weekend we've done a whole lot of nothing and it's been glorious. Yesterday was declared a Stay at Home day and while the kids played I pottered around the house, did some housework and washing, decanted my blackberry gin, baked some mince pies (ready rolled pastry and shop bought mincemeat, but we're calling them homemade) and we have all enjoyed watching a lot of Christmas television, The Box of Delights, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Home Alone in particular. The classics. Today we ventured out to the shops briefly for festive supplies (more yarn for Angus's crocheted dog, and sweets to decorate the gingerbread house with) and even made it out for late afternoon a walk around the harbour in the setting sun. Actually, that brief walk was amazing. I don't know about you but I haven't felt much sun on my face lately, what with the incessant mild, wet weather we've had this autumn. It's much too warm and seems to rain every day. I would like to wake up to a hard frost, to one of those very cold, crisp, blue skied days. Wouldn't that be nice?

I've also been fiddling around with the arrangement on the mantel. You know how I love a pretty mantel display, and how I have struggled to fill this enormous slab of wood that sits above our fireplace.

This will be our first Christmas in this house, and so I gave a lot of consideration to what to put where. I know it looks like I put all the decorations in one place but a few favourite bits stayed in their boxes this year, like our toilet roll tube Nativity scene and my alpine tea light holders. I realised that I don't have to get absolutely every single thing out every year, that some things can stay packed away. My two homemade stockings still hang either side of the fireplace, as they always do, and I picked out the red with some pretty IKEA lanterns and a poinsettia. 

We found some tiny baubles in the loft that were just perfect for my bare branched tree, and the rest is a mixture of favourite bits and bobs, while sort-of sticking to a red, white and wood theme. 

There was one old favourite I did unpack though, and will enjoy taking out of the Christmas box for many years to come: my felt gingerbread house.

I've been toying with the idea of making a real one this year, an actual edible gingerbread house. We'll see how that goes. 

(Also - I don't know why blogger has centered half the text in this post. I did not tell it to. Grrr.)

A Cete of Badgers

This week....

:: We celebrated Angus's sixth birthday.

:: I learnt the collective noun for a group of badgers.

:: I made a delighted boy a badger t-shirt (and my mum was thrilled to find that blue jumper in M&S.)

:: I baked two cakes, one to be eaten after school with family and a McDonald's Happy Meal...

...and one Badgery one for the party at the weekened.

* * * 

And in other, non-badger related news, I also:

:: Picked bluebells from my sister's garden.

:: Learnt the difference between native and Spanish bluebells (these are Spanish)

:: Continue to be displeased with the mantel arrangement I've been faffing with. Everything about it is wrong and unbalanced and I don't know why. (I later moved the pussy willow stems and that helped a bit, but still, it's traumatic.)

:: Discovered that still warm off-cuts of cake with buttercream sandwiched between them are delicious, and everything I thought a whoopie pie (remember those?) would be but wasn't.

:: Saw a bird from the kitchen window, photographed it (sorry, not much zoom on my camera) and then looked it up in a book! A first for me. Suddenly we are all very interested in birds, all four of us. I think it's a goldfinch and I know you'll all correct me if I'm wrong.

:: Failed to cut the grass and admired the daisies instead. Why are we so obsessed with neat lawns in this country? Why are daisies and dandelions all over the grass considered a gardening failure?

:: Got excited about these rhododendron buds in the garden and wondered what colour they'll be.

:: Enjoyed John's banana ice cream, his first experiment with the ice cream maker he got for Christmas.

:: Also enjoyed using this old Tala ice cream scoop I recently liberated from my Grandad's kitchen drawer. Nice handle.

:: Had a lovely morning in Arundel with Sara. There are pretty buildings everywhere you look in that picturesque town.

:: Started a new book, The Year Of Living Danishly. It's very good, very funny.

Also, how lovely is that pink gerbera? 

I am looking forward to an early night and slightly less hectic week ahead. 

On The Mantel: December

Ah, December. A month of extremes, of light and dark, activity and rest. It's always a very busy month for us with many family birthdays, and the build up to Christmas Day is inevitably a slightly chaotic rush of shopping, baking, wrapping, decorating, parties and get togethers. All very fun and all very tiring. I always like the post-Christmas lull the best, that golden week between Christmas and New Year when it's acceptable to loll around in your pyjamas all day, eating turkey sandwiches and doing jigsaws. 

My December mantel is a restrained affair, largely because all the Christmas stuff is still up in the loft. There is no point putting the tree up this year, as we'll be taking it down again next week, and there's barely room for it anyway what with all the boxes. But I have permitted myself one small space for festive decoration, one calm and quiet area to fill with prettiness. I was thinking about mountains, sunsets, bare trees and frosty mornings when I did this. Some of the best things about Winter. 

I bought these cable car tree decorations in Asda a while ago and think they are completely adorable. (John said I should put toy soldiers in them and act out Where Eagles Dare.) Imagine, if you will, that they are travelling gracefully up a big grey mountain...

My eBay alpine painting hangs here temporarily, joined by a line of reindeer marching along the top. 

Do they have reindeer in the Alps? I don't know if they do.

Our homemade tea light holders glow nicely. I love these, we light them most days.

I have a thing about snowglobes and couldn't resist this polar bear. I am pretty certain that polar bears do not live in Alpine regions. 

I didn't add the children's stockings this year. They're too red. I know, it's terrible, isn't it? Instead I hung some warm socks.

Here is my mantel last year (on the right) and the year before (on the left). Definitely more Christmas-tastic.

It's just so nice to have one small area of order amid the disorder! John just said to me "What will you do if there is no mantel in our new house?" Don't worry, I'll make sure that never happens.

On The Mantel: November

I tend  - perhaps a little unfairly - to think of November as a bleak month. It doesn't have the bustle and sparkle of December and seems full of wet days and dark afternoons. But it's a month of great beauty too; after the clocks change, the sunrises are spectacular, and the last few leaves cling to the trees like little coloured flags waving in the gloom. Christmas discussions and preparations are ongoing, but not yet at full panic stage. 

I'm continuing my monthly mantel project, marking the seasons and rhythms of family life with pieces that were found inside and out, the bought and the made, the old and the new.

For this month's mantel, I wanted warmth. Soft warmth and glowing light, but not the Christmassy kind. I found this in copper and pink tones, in feathers and tassels. I'm ridiculously delighted to have something from the garden in a vase in November; I cut these these allium heads in the summer and put them in the garage to dry out. I hung my tasseled wall hanging next to the bird print. Bella's Diwali pot sits next to a favouite pink Ken Eardley jug. I like the way the bird on the jug echos the print and the feathered, fringed feel.

I made a garland from a mixture of natural, found feathers and ones I made from cardboard. I just love the wavy, irregular shapes. John thinks it's a bit much, he said "Err - less is more, Gill" but I like it. I'll put together a quick how-to for you tomorrow.

I'm thinking about December now. I feel an alpine theme coming on...