Welcome to Boxwood Cottage: December 2008

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Oh Tannenbaum

The tree is finally up and sparkling! One day before Santa comes he he :)

This year I put some of my soldered Christmas ornaments on the tree and really like the nostalgic look of it!

View through my Advent chandelier (as always you can enlarge all the photos if you'd like to see more details by simply clicking on them):

There is never enough sparkle at Christmas, wouldn't you agree?

Some more close ups of my my newly soldered nostalgic Christmas ornaments:

A dear friend has made me the fabric skate boot in the background 2 years ago:

There is mixture of new but nostalgic, old-Vintage and self made ornaments on my tree, but I used only my silver ornaments, no red ones this year:

The reflector baubles are very old and belong to my faves for many years now:

I was so lucky to find 8 more oval shaped huge glasses which are old stock and very rare to find over here and I used them to make 4 new nostalgic ornaments for my tree, like this one:

The sweet Tilda bird in the next photo is a Christmas present from my dear friend Anita, she actually made me 5 new birds which came in a very pretty rose box, I really love the snow flakes fabric, so sweet!

Anita has also made me this gorgeous fabric Toile de Jouy heart which I decorated on my antique armoire along with a beautiful quilted heart she made for me last year. She knows how much I love Toile de Jouy and when she asked me about the size, shape etc. I would like the heart in, I asked her if she could sew beads around the heart the way I saw it on the pretty fabric hearts from Julie Collings and the sweet heart she is she fullfilled my wish and I just love it! I got even more presents from her, enchanting fabric tags, more sweet hearts, an awesome inspiration board with toile too and a wonderful fabric bunting rose garland, but I'll have post these treasures in another post.

I leave you with another view of the whole tree in all its candle light glory (click to enlarge) and once again I like to wish y'all a very merry and peaceful Christmas surrounded by your loved ones!

Hugs Carola xox

Monday, December 15, 2008

Pretty little Christmas blog party - better late than never!

Can I still join the party? I know I'm late to Heather Pretty petals Pretty little Christmas blog party today but I was sick all weekend, had to work today and then had to light lots of candles when I came home from the office and take some new photos for the party, load them up etc. and well here I am. I just saw that some sweet party people have already posted to my last post from 2 weeks ago, thinking it was the party post, but I don't want to cheat you, so here are some new photos of Christmas decorations at Boxwood Cottage this season. The first two photos are taken in my studio

but the real cosy Christmas is happening down in my living room:

Please click on my photos to enlarge and see all the details. As most of you will know in Germany we usually don't have our tree up before the 24th of December, which is when Santa comes to bring our presents, in the evening of the 24th, not in the morning of the 25th like it is in the USA for example. And we use to have a real fir tree, no artificial ones. We went in the woods (to a tree farmer) to choose our tree a month ago, and we'll go and get it next week, so I can't show it to you at this date. Instead of it I can show you some other decorations like my all time favorite white bird cage for example. See the cute tiny stocking hanging on the cage? It's an ornament from my friend Cari Kraft and talented Cari although made some of the ornaments on my mantle (photo above).

The most important thing for a pretty little Christmas for me is candle light so I have candles and tea lights lit everywhere at the Cottage as soon as it is dark enough.

This is the place where I love to sit, have my Latte macchiato, feel cosy and read my Vampire novel when I come home from the office. I've just finished the 3rd book of the Twilight series and hope Santa will bring the forth - in English pretty please dear Santa, cause I can't stand read it in my mother tongue German, I tried but didn't like it!

Unfortunately it was to dark today to take photos of my deck and garden which is also decorated and I have feeders for my sweet feathered friends everywhere and when I look tkrough the dark window in the background of the next photo during the day I can observe them picking peanuts, cranberries, sunflower seeds etc. That is so much fun for me and I really enjoy this, it adds a lot to my pretty little Christmas feeling.

Candles make all glass things shine, so glass items like in these photos belong to my fave Christmas decorations:

Anja if you read this you will recognise that I've copied your fab idea and used my vintage enamel Guglehupf cake mold for an Advent wreath. It's just not safe to light the candles because I don't want the fir tree branches to burn lol, but I think it looks very Christmassy and it smells good too :)

I also love to decorate with red fruits like the Pomegranate for Christmas. In this bowl is one real and one glass Pomegrante. Oh and I was very lucky to find two star shape glasses, so of course I had to solder them into a silver Christmas star ornament with a cute vintage picture right away. I so wish I had the skills to cut glass in such beautiful shapes.

Merry Christmas to all my dear blogging friends and readers around the world and I hope that you will all have a joyful and peaceful celebration! I hope to get around to do another post before Christmas, but you never know, the time passes always fast, but even faster at around Christmas, at least so it seems to me.

It's already quite late, so I don't think I'll be able to visit all the party participants tonight, but I promise that I'll keep visiting all week.

Hugs Carola xox