It’s that time of year again, the changing of the seasons and when you start to feel a nip in the air. It’s my favourite time of year and I’ll take it over summer anytime.  Cosy nights in with log fires, candles, blankets and hot drinks are my idea of bliss. I always start to burn my cinnamon Yankee candles in October and I feel that Christmas music is perfectly acceptable from anytime in November!!

I absolutely love the Christmas editions of all my favourite interior mags and love to browse through all the gift ideas and recipes for some inspiration. I love to decorate in pastels at Christmas as I’m not really into lots of red although I do like to have some traditional decor mixed in.

I have a few old Christmas records and love to play them for that old fashioned Christmas feeling. I have such amazing memories of my childhood Christmases and always try to recreate the feeling every year. Our childhood home was a large Victorian house with huge rooms with fireplaces and we always had a real tree with vintage concave baubles on it. The smell of a real Christmas tree transports me back to my childhood in an instant. I veer between real trees and my artificial one,  as, much as I love the smell, I hate the mess of needles everywhere. So it’s usually one year of a real one and then the next year artificial!!

I love using glass domes and cake stands at Christmas to display my little collection of VW Beetles, pastel houses and miniature trees. Pinks and blues feature heavily in my Christmas decor but I usually have a little real tree either in the kitchen or in the upstairs landing with more traditionally coloured decorations and coloured lights as this reminds me of my childhood Christmases.

Last year I used vintage Christmas postcards to make bunting to hang along my mantel and it looked really lovely so definitely going to be repeating that idea again this year. I also put some of my vintage baubles into old sweetie jars that I found in an antique shop on the mantelpiece with little trees etc. I love the fact that some of the postcards are over 100 years old and that they’ve survived all this time. The illustrations on them are so beautiful and evoke real feelings of nostalgia of years gone by.

Even the dolls house gets a Christmas tree and I found little light up ones in the garden centre last year that were perfect for it! I’m very excited as the Christmas shop in our local garden centre opens next week and it’s always stunning!! I’ll no doubt let you all see it on my insta stories!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this little Christmas preview of how I use my vintage goodies in my Christmas decor. Come the first of December I’ll be doing it all over again and I can’t wait!!

Louise xxx