Our Pea Green Christmas

Christmas inside Our Pea Green Pod was wonderfully cosy & relatively peaceful (if you drown out the giddiness of Eldest kipper due to being entirely spoilt!)

I cooked my very first Christmas dinner (duck, rather than the traditional turkey) which was surprisingly successful & we have been enjoying duck sandwiches & bubble & squeak for the past few days! We had a real tree which smells divine & a mountain of presents, the like of which I have never seen in my life. The girls were very spoilt indeed!

Christmas was mainly hand made this year. I wanted to make Christmas as warm & as perfect as possible despite having practically no budget & so I had been knocking up a few bits & bobs for the past month or so. Some of these I sold, but others I kept for our home.

I thought I'd share with you a few of my Christmas bobs, all of which are exceedingly simple to make (hell, if I can, anyone can!) & I hope you enjoy & maybe even get a little inspired!

For the children (including the big kids...us) we had some little stockings to go on the tree. Eldest was thrilled that Santa had packed hers with nuts & chocolates & candy canes.

 For our tree I made some little felt bits & bobs. So simple - just felt shapes stuffed, with a blanket stitch around the edge & with buttons or sequins or bells for decoration. For some of these I used buttons from my Grandfathers old button tin which are actually older than I am! I love the idea that in years to come I'll be able to tell the children where they came from & how I used to love playing & counting the old buttons in that tin as a child.

I also had these gorgeous little wooden toadstools which I found in the local gardening shop. They were only 60p each & I treasure them! They complimented our little peg soldiers wonderfully. As a child I used to make these with my mum & they hold much sentiment for me, as well as being very cute & simple indeed! I can't wait to paint more with my girls & create warm memories for them when they get older.

For the mantelpiece & fireplace I made some bunting which I love, using some sumptuous Christmas fabric. I also had a few toadstools dotted around, some lovely thin holly tinsel which was a bargain from the range & complimented our usual fairy lights which hang there all year long. 

But, for me, the thing that really made our Christmas absolutely Pea Green was these two glittering faeries (even if the littlest one was a wee bit unimpressed at everything due to lacking the motor skills to actually open or play with presents or the comprehension to know what the heck was going on!)

Hope y'all had a wonderful one & that the New Year holds lots of magic for you. I think it shall for us!

I bloody love Christmas me - though not usually in October!

Today, after three hours of travelling on trains (more on that & the rude commuters of Britain later), I finally have got round to making some Christmas bits & bobs. I have spent the last hour or so snipping & sewing & it feels good! (With the exception of an aching back - so blog & dinner break happening now!)

Here's a quick sneak peek at what kind of things I'll be making. Goodness knows if I'll sell anything - craft fair tomorrow & I plan on popping some of these lovelies on the Little Pea Green Etsy Shop - but if not it'll save me making more for our own tree!

Last week I was sat in our living room, minding my own business when I suddenly got a subtle sniff of something like a pine scent. I think it was the faint aroma coming from a little lavender bag which Daughter had found & claimed as her own for a while but was now stuffed down the back of the sofa & forgotten, but my brain was obviously in a jovial mood & so interpreted this as a whiff of festivity. I became overwhelmingly excited about the impending arrival of winter & the festive season. I cannot wait to see the living room transformed with bunting & decorations (I am quite the traditionalist so lots of rustic reds, greens & golds); for the scent of the tree & the excitement as the presents build up beneath it; for the cursing every time someone kneels down & gets pine needles angrily poked into their knees; for an open fire roaring during the day & then it's embers gently roasting chestnuts on an evening; to buy pointless & rich foods & to gorge on them with absolutely no shame, just pure revelry, swilling it all down with a slug of Irish cream liqueur or a hot coffee cheekily spiked with a shot of brandy, whatever the time of day.

I could go on forever & ever about the best bits of Christmas but, this year, the thing I cannot wait to have our brand new family in the midst of all this toasty-warmth & cosiness.

I bloody love Christmas, me. Even the cheesy songs.

P.S. - apologies for getting so excited so soon, I don't usually do such silly things but I am due to have a baby in one month & as I am prescribing myself one month of focusing on nothing but the baby & sleep everything like this is getting pushed forward one month, so I am living as though it were the 17th November! Therefore I find this festive fanaticism is entirely justified!