As you may have guessed by my absence of festival news – I don’t do much in the way of celebrating at Christmas although I do enjoy decorating the house; I decorate on xmas eve and then on 12th night, tonight,  it all comes down. I do, however, like to bring in the new year properly and so this year we had a large party on New Year’s day. Lots of people around for lunch, mostly old friends but several new as well  and one of the guests who had never been to the house before commented to Rosemary Murphy (her blog has pictures of the actual party ) how he thought that all the decorations were lovely and it must have taken me ages to put it all together. “What decorations- it always looks like this” she replied.

Well, actually there was a front door wreath,  I know this usually lives on the landing outside my studio but I added the red berries from the garden and put it on the front door.

And yes I must confess that the red roses wreath has lived permanently on the kitchen door ever  since it was brought in from the front door on 12th night 2007 – but it looks so lovely against the Blue Green painted (Farrow and Ball) door and I did select the scarves especially to colour co-ordinate with it. In fact this kitchen door always has a selection of scarves draped over it depending on the season and my agenda so I am thinking that it may provide a fabric series of posts in the future…..and the future is soon going to get very busy – but not just yet!

Moving into the small panneled room where I have shown my seasonal pelmet decoration as the header of this post  – you can see how it usually looks above, in fact I quite miss that extra xmas swag right now, but no doubt will get used to the minimal look again.

The fireplace also gets swagged for the 12 days,

This mantle-piece holds several art works by friends and colleagues, and by chance there is a red theme to them, so they lend themselves easily  to the xmas look –  the painting above is by Alfred Stockham, an old friend whose birthday falls on New Year’s day and he was the guest of honour at our party.

meanwhile this little silver heart wreath always lives on the shell wall lights.

And lights are the main area where, I grant you, that the extra xmas decorations are especially hard to spot, but those amongst you who are sharp eyed should enjoy the search.

I just had to include the photograph below because of the wonderful reflection cast onto the ceiling from the finial of the venetian style mirror – it isn’t at all apparent in the room itself…and I have just realised it is because of the flash on the camera!

Now I have to own up that this chandelier is festooned with all the past 8 years xmas decorations in the form of plastic, glass or crystal drops which I first started to add to it the year I bought it…and then couldn’t bring myself to remove them they looked so pretty – so this now is a cascade of pure glitz.

And last but not least in the return to textiles and my own work – I must show off my old and getting better by the year patchwork curtains made specially for this room