Decorating for Easter

An early Easter is always tricky.

Here we are on the first day of spring, but the weather is still feeling decidely wintery.  And Easter is less then ten days away.

We will be spending Easter in Brittany.  We leave next week, but I still like to have elements of Easter in my London home.

My daughter and I had a lovely time the other evening adding a few touches of Easter to this house, we are both really looking forward to decorating in Brittany next Thursday.

Here are our London efforts.

Have a lovely weekend, and I'll catch up with you next week once  we have arrived in France.

Decorating for Christmas

When I looked out of the window this morning I thought I might be able to photograph some lovely wintery scenes, but sadly, by the time I returned from dropping my daughter at school, the sprinkling of snow had disappeared.

On Monday, when I had picked her up from school she had let our a plaintive cry, "I am the only person in my class who has not got her tree up at home!"  Poor lamb.

So yesterday, to remedy this dreadful disaster I set about decorating the house.  I put the tree up with the lights, but left the decorating for her to do, while I focused on shelves and windows.

I always feel quite thrifty when I decorate, as I reuse many things from year to year, in particular my crib figures, I just move them around to different places in the house, but one is always on the dining room windowsill and one on the living room bookcase.

As the song says; "It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!"

My beautiful Mexican crib figures
I bought them when the boys were small
they were made by a fairtrade cooperative in Mexico

These Italian figures are more recent
I love their simple elegance

I am rather partial to deer
and the turkey candlestick holders came from the States
(I think they are for Thanksgiving, but I always use them
at Christmas)

These are waiting to be 'homed'
The penguins and polar bears are for cake decorations

My new decorations this year, seem to all have some tartan
(it must be my Scottish roots!)

Decorating for Halloween

I love Halloween, there's something timeless and magical about it.  Perhaps it's because it's an ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival, and despite my English birth and upbringing I like to think I am spiritually celtic, with Scottish and Irish Grandparents I think I can justify the claim.

I enjoy having a small child who enters into the spirit of the day.  Yesterday she got up and dressed as a witch all day, a good, kind and beautiful witch of course.

We had a lovely lunch to which she had invited the other little girls in her class from school,  they all came dressed up too.

After lunch we went to Ham House to see the Halloween festivities there, and as well as doing a Halloween trail in the garden we spent a while in the kitchens.  While my daughter and her friend spent time 'cooking'  I was able to photograph the magnificent Pumpkins.

An orangey Halloween arrangement

As the girls were mainly in the dining room
I concentrated the decorations there

Lots of pumpkins and spiders

I do love the cobwebs, such great fun

And very effective

More Halloween/Autumnal decoration

Scary!  This was at Ham House

Amazing Pumpkins, all grown in the gardens of Ham House

Beautiful shapes, colours and textures

Fantastic

I'm not sure, but do you know if these are Medlars?
I really want to find some and make some preserves
but I think they are only grown in gardens, and are not
a cash crop?
Any ideas?

A Touch of Halloween

My little girl is on half term, and is terribly excited about Halloween.  She's having four of her friends over on the 31st for a play date and lunch and she just  can't wait!

This week we are catching up with other friends who are not at her school,  as many of them only have a one week break, so we are going to be busy!

Today, in anticipation of the fun ahead, we made a 'haunted' gingerbread house.

We also put out some of the Halloween decorations I have accumulated over the years.  I have endeavoured to stick with tasteful things.  However, I  have sometimes made the mistake of shopping with a child!  So there are a few ghosts, haunted houses and grinning pumpkins that I may not have chosen had I been on my own!

Some very jolly ghosts

The conkers have been gathered on local walks

The Divali candle holder was made at school last year 

Madly, grinning pumpkins

Haunted houses

Here are those happy ghosts, again

The gingerbread house