noel update

Remember when I made this?

It's a copy of a copy of a Pottery Barn one, now of course we don't even have Pottery Barn here in Australia, and I really have no idea what it's all about, but anyway I liked this and thought I would make one.

I made it silver to match my Christmas colours but it wasn't quite right, it lacked some depth or something,

So I took it and rubbed on some black paint and then rubbed it off again and smoothed it out with a touch of sanding.

This is what it looks like now.

I think it gives it a more aged metal look.

Here it is up on the lounge room wall, but it didn't like it here so it came down, literally.

So I still have to find a home for it, but it is having fun floating from place to place.

splash of red, dash of green

I normally don't decorate my bedroom for Christmas but there is an awful lot of decorating going on here this year that I don't normally do.

So for a grand total of $2.99 my bedroom has a new sophisticated Christmas look.
 Why don't you come inside and see.

Here are some baubles on the door leading into my room.

Although I have both a red and white and a green and white quilt set, I am still totally loving my vintage chenille, plus as it's summer I have no quilt on my bed just this and a sheet. 

So I just Christmasised (I think I just made up a new word!) it by adding green and red pillow cases from my sets.

I have since added a couple of red and green baubles to the frames above the bed, but I haven't taken a photo yet and it's too early to do so- I might wake up VCH sshhh!

 EDITED to add this photo after VCH woke up.
Here are the frames above my bed a few little trinkets.

Next on my shoe drawers I put this little collection of red and green candles I already had onto a white oval plate.

 Here they are lit.

Here is some of the Christmas bush that I have floating around the house for a week or so- it is lasting really well.

I stacked red and green books, well actually I had a stack of red and a stack of green so I mixed them, you'll see the other stack in a minute, and some green baubles- here is the $2.99 part, I bought a pkt of 12 from Woolies.

Here is the whole look, the red handbag adds a nice touch don't you think?

Next comes my lovely old cane chair (this was my grandparents).

I put a red and green cushion here that belong to my quilt sets.

Yes that's another chenille bedspread folded up - I bought this one for The Girl, but it hasn't quite got to her bed yet!

Now let's move into the parent's retreat area.

In the corner of the bookshelf are two green buckets one with more of those baubles (lots of scrunched up newspaper under this to bring up the height.

On the window sill are some red and green candles, waiting for a romantic evening with VCH

(maybe Tuesday night -24 yrs since our first date), you can just see my updated NOEL in the corner there but it has since moved, I'll tell you what I did to it in another post.

Here on the bookshelf are 3 green candle holders with candles inside and my Mary Gregory candy jar

and below are 4 little trees that fell over and their bases broke, so the are sitting inside some old candles that one of my sweet children kindly removed the wicks for me, knowing that months in the future I might want to use them to hold up Christmas trees.

Here is the other stack of books teamed with a green vase.

Under the window on my blanket box is some more Christmas Bush, the wreath off my front door that I found laying on the ground the string that was holding it up had broken somehow?? and I haven't got around to putting it back up so it found its way here along with a red place mat and some more candles.

So there you have it with a splash of red and a dash of green my bedroom is ready for Christmas!

For other views of my bedroom click here, here and here

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a little bit vintage

It is pretty much unheard of for me to still be decorating this close to Christmas but with so many ideas floating around in blogland I am still doing things.

I remember seeing someone with some vintage pictures or cards and I knew I had some in my desk.

I have been decluttering every cupboard and room- I haven't really posted about this 'cause it's pretty mundane but it is happening and all except for the study will be done before Christmas- I decided to leave it until after because it is a really big job and I want to do it well and go through all the school and craft supplies to see what I need to order for 2011.

So anyway back to this post- while I was decluttering the desk I pulled out these replicas of vintage postcards - I have a set of Christmas and a set of Birthday ones that I got years and years ago - probably BC.

I have used a fair few Christmas ones but I still had enough for this little project.

I also had a set of small frames that I picked up at the op shop for 50c each - I haven't decided what to actually do with them yet but I am thinking 6 frames = 6 children.

So as a temporary thing I stuck the postcards into the frames and onto the wall with a little red ribbon.

My criteria for this was they had to be upright and they couldn't have snow- it's summer here, and they couldn't have Santa as we don't do Santa.

I found some nice ones with children and families.

This little girl in the red dress is sweet

and here is a mother with her children, there is also one of a father and children too.

They look so sweet hanging on my wall near the fire place and Christmas tree.

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Brambleberry Cottage

this is the way we wash the clothes....

This year in her Christmas sack The Girl is getting a washing kit.

This consists of a washing basket, a bucket, pegs and a peg bag and a clothes line and some cloths to wash and hang out.

I have had this idea for a while so I have been hunting for things.

I came across a basket at a cheap shop that was the perfect size for a little girl, but the colour left a lot to be desired.

So I set about "girlifying" it- is there such a word? 

But you know what I mean.

First I took off the liner and I'll show you what I did with this later.

and then I spray painted it white, inside and out.

Taking the lining, I pulled it apart which only took a minute cause it was so poorly sewn and used that as a pattern to make a new liner out of a pretty pink spot fabric I had in my stash.

It was quite simple to do.

I just used some white cotton tape I had to make the ties.

Now it looks girly!

Here is the little bucket and a peg bag I made out of some more of the spot. 

I wrote the "pegs" on with a fabric crayon  and the bright pink pegs I found at Big W.

 This is what we chose for the line.

We thought the rigid wire would be easier to peg stuff on and we will attach it to the side of the cubby house which is near the real clothes line.

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Brambleberry Cottage

special tree

B4 and B5 decided they wanted to decorate the top of their clothes drawers 

(which for the moment live in the hallway outside their room).

They thought they would pool their resources and buy a small tree.

I had been op shopping the week before and saw that the op shops had heaps of Christmas stuff out, so we headed to Grandma's op shop (the op shop my MIL volunteers at).

They picked up a tree for $2 which wasn't so small, two baskets of decorations $1 each and a star 50c so for $4.50 they had their tree and decorations.

They then went to the cheap shop and bought some lights for $5.

So for under $10 they were set, they came home and decorated the hall, including a couple of old decorations that I no longer use strung up to the ceiling.

photos courtesy of B4

busy buzzy bees

Do you remember the swarm of bees we had?

I rang WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service) who gave me the number of the "bee man"

I rang the "bee man" only to find out from his wife that he was now in a Nursing Home.

She had no suggestions.

I rang back WIRES who had no suggestions either, other than they would probably move on and were just passing through.

Well a week or so went by and they were still there.

After speaking to a friend he told me that if they were without a queen they could be angry and suggested to smoke them out.

Before I could convey this to VCH he did a not so very clever thing - he smashed into the tree with his work ute and knocked a lot of the bees down onto the bonnet of his ute- did I mention that some of my precious children were in the car with him?

He hosed them off the ute and we then discussed what to do about them and how we were going to get rid of them.

 Well the next day they were gone.

They obviously didn't like their home being hit by a nasty ol' ute.

So his not so clever thing turned out OK after all.

But they left us a little present to remember them by:

Some bees wax- they had started to build a hive!

christmas reading

Here are a few of our favourite Christmas books displayed on the top of the bookshelf in the lounge room.
Here is a quick review on a couple of them.

The candle in the window is a beautiful story about a shoemaker who has lost his family and is very sad at Christmas time, he is visited by some people (angels in disguise) who put a candle in the window of his shop and tell him that Christ will visit.

This leads to him get ready for a visit from Jesus, in the meantime he helps several people out but wonders when Jesus will arrive.
The angels return and explain to him that by helping those people he was helping Christ and he was indeed visited by the Saviour.
When I was shopping the other day I heard a song sung by Dolly Parton that was very similar to this story.

This is a beautifully illustrated book about 4 animals who are visited by an angel and asked to carry someone important to Bethlehem. 

As it turns out the one who carries the most important of all is the humble donkey.

This book uses the text of the King James to tell the story of the Nativity with fun illustrations by Julie Vivas.

This is a story of a little girl who "rescues" a cold baby Jesus from her churches Nativity scene.

This book is new to us this year, I bought it unseen after seeing it recommended somewhere.

While the story line has merit I didn't think the book itself was very well written.

 

Each year we read one of Arnold Ytreeide's books

This year we are reading Bartholomew's Passage.
Click on the here to go to a great link I found that tells about the three books in the series and gives some background information on the books.
These books were out of print but it looks like they are back in print.
If you click on the book it will take you straight to the book depository to buy the book.

For the last 3 years we have also had a Jesse tree, where we read a passage from the bible each day that takes us from Creation through to Christ, the quietest child gets to put the felt ornament onto the tree.

I have in the past used some bare branches made into a tree, but it didn't appeal to me this year and I didn't have a place to put it so I cut a branch off a gum tree and put it in a metal bucket on my veranda. 

picnic for two

As a little break from Christmas posts I thought I would share this scene from yesterday.

B5 and The Girl sharing a picnic in our little outdoor room.

It's nice to have sun again after so many days rain, of course along with the sun comes the humidity!

The girl has a love of picnics and often takes it upon herself to pack a little picnic lunch into a backpack for herself and B5 to share at any time of the day.

This shot was taken just after breakfast.

This picnic consists of a sandwich and some just in season peaches.

Stay tuned for a post on our Christmas reading

random christmas decorating

Here is a close up of part of our tree, it seemed a bit bare last year so I hit the after Christmas sales and bought some new red and silver baubles, it was so much fun getting out the decorations this year and finding boxes of new baubles- the tree is very much child decorated.

I saw this somewhere in blogland and thought it looked pretty, a silver tray and lots of candles, some I had, some I bought at the cheap shop.

Here it is out on the veranda coffee table with a red runner, it has now moved inside onto the dining table.

This is also a copy of something I saw at vintage wanna bee, I just used red and silver baubles because they're what I had.

and topped them with a red ribbon made from a scrap of fabric, I found the green stuff for $5 at the cheap shop.

 With some more $5 green stuff I framed my picture window in the dining room.

I added some red and silver balls that had lost their tops, I just pushed them on the branches, and some silver snowflakes that came with the new decorations are just sort of sitting there.

 A photo was missing from the frame (I'm not sure where it disappeared to) so I printed this subway art off and stuck it in the gap.

 I picked these small letters up at the cheap shop the other day and sprayed them all silver to match.

 JOY can be found on the shelf with the Christmas books and some Christmas Bush in a white jug.

I picked up a bunch at the fruit and veg the other day and I have 5 vases/jars of it around the house now, so good value there (Christmas Bush is an Australian native plant that flowers in summer when it's Christmas, it is so named because of its traditional Christmas colours).

 Here are the PEACE letters on my dining room table.

And a photo of the candles now in my dining room- I told the children that we would light them on Christmas Eve when we have our traditional roast meal.

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