This Christmas

Hello lovelies ,
What's your favourite part of Christmas? I think mine is Christmas eve, when all the decorations are looking lovely and the children's anticipation is infectious. This year I noticed the wonderful seasonal colours in the treats laid out on our coffee table... Quality Street are traditional in the BM household...they taste yummy and I just love the colours of the wrappers.
 I was very happy to pick up these clementines locally...I adore the fabulous shiny fruit in their cute little wooden box .
  Another tradition is nuts in shells...mostly because they remind me of my childhood Christmases .......

Over on the sofa  the Christmas cushion cover I made a couple of years ago was making me smile...it could be the robins slightly odd looking Santa hat ....never the less , I still love it .....it was inspired by a Christmas card brought home by one of my boys and simply appliqued onto a plain cover I already had.......

Sadly I didn't have much time to sit down as baking was required for our Christmas eve visitors. Along with mince pies and fairy cakes I decided to make a  cake .
Not your traditional Christmas cake (which I love, but the boys are not keen on) but yummy chocolate cake . I added some red,white and green sprinkles and my mums old cake decorations to make it look more festive......

I was thinking about cuckoos wonderful baking when I finished this ...that girl is an amazing cake decorator ( scroll down this post to see her beautiful cake )....mine looks so basic in comparison, but then I realised I could borrow something Id seen on her wonderful cake .......a fun banner...yes!! no cake decorating skill required:0)  
I literally threw this together in less that ten minutes. I love it when inspiration strikes and you end up with something similar to what popped into your minds eye with very little effort.......just a couple of kebab sticks, some yarn ,ready made pompoms,and some coloured paper. I was going to write the letters on the little triangles but came across a stars alphabet I printed  ages ago ( from here ) and they looked perfect .......

The pompoms were threaded onto the yarn with a large needle and the boys reminded me to add two dots above the E ......

                                                                            LOVE IT :0)


Something I'm also loving is my Pay-it-forward gift sent to me by ANDAMENTO. Isn't the wrapping lovely.............

I was very good and waited till Christmas day to open it, only to find lots of individually wrapped items...

Inside were these lovely things........

No less than three tree decorations , a pretty glass magnet, mulled wine sachet , chocolate coins , and a little red box containing this tiny  Nativity scene........

I love it all , thank you :0)
I now have a year to make three parcels of my own to pass onto any lovely bloggers who are willing to do the same.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I do love it ,but I will admit to being ever so slightly relieved  when it's over . Still, the decorations will be staying till new year and I've found another spot for my impromptu cake banner...it's now an impromptu hyacinth banner ......

Jacquie x