Having only just shared November windows with you last week, I’m a bit more organised this month with my December windows. This is a monthly photo challenge by Wild Daffodil, so follow the link to see lots more windows. Next year the theme is textiles, which I’m looking forward to, as you can imagine!

Some of these photos just have windows in the background, so you just have to go with the flow 🙂

On Sunday it was Otley’s Victorian Fayre, this annual event has been going on for many years, the children dress up and sing carols on the temporary stage in the market place, the stall holders and shopkeepers dress up too. The stalls were pretty good this year, a good mix of really nice craft stuff, charity stalls, farmers market stalls, not as many tat stalls! There’s a little fun fair too if you’re so inclined! When you have kids attending a school in Otley you end up with a little collection of clothes which can be adapted for Victorian Fayre day!! Someone once came into work in a panic as their child needed an outfit to visit an old mill, the next day I took in the pinafore dress, blouse, cotton pinny, mop cap, shawl…here’s Helen looking very angelic many years ago!

All the shops decorate their windows, the charity shops find as much Victoriana as they can, this is the Cats Protection League shop..

It all looks very festive. This year Sunday was a cold, crisp day, a good day for getting wrapped up warm and trying some mulled cider (much nicer I think than mulled wine!) and roasted chestnuts. Otley brass band play Christmas carols, this always makes me feel a little emotional as one of my early Christmas memories is of the Salvation Army band coming round the streets, they always seemed to reach our culdesac on Christmas Eve, we would stand on the step and listen to the carols, I always requested O Little Town of Bethlehem.

There’s a few traditional Morris Dancing groups round here, so they usually do a display. We have a folk festival earlier in the year when the town is full of them – some of them black their faces out and look quite scary!

Once we were back home it was time to gather some holly and ivy from the back lane, some variegated foliage from the garden, and make my Advent ring. In the past I’ve always used an oasis ring, but in an attempt to be a bit more environmentally friendly, I’ve tried a different method. I saw a chap on one of the stalls with the metal ring bound with hay which he then used to make wreaths for the door. He looked a bit surprised when I asked him how much for just the ring – £1! For that it was worth a try!

The ring snuggled down nicely onto my candelabra. I was planning to wire twigs to it, but in the end they seemed to stay just from being poked into the hay. I’m pretty pleased with it, it didn’t need to be as densley packed as with oasis as a little hay on view isn’t too objectionable. I just need to be careful when the candles start getting low that the whole things doesn’t go up in smoke! Time will tell whether the foliage lasts long enough – even with oasis I had to replace most of it by Christmas with dried or artificial decorations. It looks lovely in front of my stained glass window.

There are four candles on it by the way, one is hiding directly behind the middle one! I got the usual jokes when I went to buy four candles, it probably ages us to a certain generation but if you haven’t seen the Two Ronnies sketch, here’s the link on Youtube.

Just want to say thank you to Wild Daffodil for organising this challenge, I wasn’t too sure about having the same theme all year at first, but I think it’s worked really well, looking forward to the textile photos next year.