• Christmas in 2020

    Katie Fforde blog Christmas in 2020

     

    Decorating my mantlepiece is usually the high spot of my pre Christmas period.  Not this year.

    I usually have luscious red berries (fake) green leaves (ditto) red fairy lights like cherries, gold fairy lights, mistletoe lights, two huge red amaryllis (fake – there’s a theme) and candlesticks topped with red and green glass fruit.  It’s warm, lush and supremely Christmassy.  What induced me to change?  Why go away from what’s made me so happy for quite a few years?  

    Possibly because I saw Kirstie’s sister doing something gorgeous with hyacinths and narcissus on Kirstie’s Handmade Christmas (in contention for my favourite television programme). I rashly thought recreating those glass containers would be easy and look wonderful on my mantelpiece this year.

    Not so far!  It looks okay when it’s dark and you can’t see much apart from the star lights, and this year’s favourite, lights in bottles.  But it’s not right and although I have ordered some more fairy lights (it was an emergency, after all) I suspect I may have to start from scratch eventually.

    My Christmas decorating is to me, something akin to a jigsaw puzzle.  I’ll know when it’s finished but I’m happy to tweak and adjust daily, until I’m happy.  I do this with flower arrangements.  When one sort of flower dies, I replace it and get a completely different look.  At Christmas things change when I find another set of lights, or go into the garden and discover something wonderfully fragrant in flower and obviously needs to come inside.  I never expect it to be done at the first shot.

    We’re not having a normal Christmas this year, so my dining table is going to become another place for special decorations instead of the scene of destruction it has been in the past.  If I’m happy with what I do, I’ll take pictures.  It will involve a bit of silver cleaning of course, but if I didn’t do my silver then, I would never do it!

    I put the red on the drawing room mantlepiece. Or I may do something different again.  But before I tackle that, I need to check on my decorated windows for Light Up Rodborough.  They’re not perfect yet either.  But they will be!

  • Comments on this post (4 comments)

    • Karen Dinan says...

      I think it looks stunning. Merry Christmas to you and your family 🎄🎄

      January 10, 2021

    • Amanda says...

      I think it looks stunning – I wasn’t going to bother decorating this year as no ond is coming but now you have inspired me so thank you.

      December 14, 2020

    • Mrs Elizabeth Thackray says...

      It’s beautiful Katie and I love it!! Christmas, as you say will be very different this year with our family all doing their own things, not beause they don’t want us but I really think we are leaving everything until the 11th hour and then decide, we certainly won’t starve but quite what we will do remains to be seen, hopefully we might have had the vaccine, at least we are in the right age group, (ugh) Still I have two of your latest books to read and that will be FANTASTIC! Thank you and happy Christmas, Bizz xxxxxxx

      December 14, 2020

    • Emma Hawkes says...

      Sounds perfect. Hope you get the decorating done as you like it. I’ve never heard of Light Up Rodborough and I’m local 🙂 Merry Christmas

      December 14, 2020

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