These Fridays come round awfully fast, in fact I didn’t even realise I’d missed last week! This week’s theme is decoration, so lots of Christmas photos coming!

This is a Faby Reilly humbug, I’ve stitched two Christmas ones, the holly one above and one with mistletoe, I’ve more patterns in stock too just waiting to be stitched! They look really cute on the Christmas tree

This is the Fold ‘n’ Stitch wreath which I made last year at a WI workhop. It’s much easier than it looks! This year I’ve put it under my Advent Wreath.

I always make a Christmas cake and decorate at least one or two gingerbread houses. Traditionally Christmas cakes are a rich fruit cake made about 6 weeks before to give it chance to mature. It’s covered with marzipan and then icing. I’ve got a book of Christmas cakes which the children used to choose a design out of each year. Now they’ve flown the nest I can choose! I’ve made two this year as my son asked me to make him one as well, I just need to decorate them both. I also need to decorate two gingerbread houses. I buy these flat packed from the local supermarket, I used to get the Ikea ones, but these are easier to get hold of and more importantly they taste nicer too!

Just so it’s not all Christmas! I love decorating my home with paintings and pictures, in particular I like gallery walls, I have one just of family photos, another going up the stairs of paintings and pictures we love and finally this one in the hall which has some of my embroideries on. Some of them are recent, some of them are over thirty years old.  I’m running rapidly out of wall space…

I like to decorate my sewing space too, it may not be tidy, but I like the homely touches, this was taken when I first moved into this sewing room, I’ve moved it round again but the decorations are the same. The decals came from America, they go all the way around the tops of the walls. I used vintage cotton reels as drawer handles and wooden letters on the top of my homemade pegboard. I’ve got various sewing pictures or embroideries on the walls too.

Follow the link over to Postcard from Gibraltar for lots more links to decorations!