Christmas At The Corner House 2011

This Christmas has been lovely and quiet following a rather hectic lead up to the big day. The last couple of days have been spent relaxing in front of the tv, sleeping, eating and drinking.

Mr C painted his 'Christmas Twig' as decoration for the Vintage Fair just before Christmas. It came home with us and somehow stayed. Mr C used all of my most brightly coloured vintage glass baubles to decorate it and I think it looks lovely and cheerful.

My favourite vintage 1940s Disney decorations were brought out along with the vintage American Santa match box and vintage Steiff robin which was a charity shop find last year.

Vintage festive classroom prints were hung

and pretty vintage baubles displayed in old glass bowls.

I like my kitsch Cath Kidston reindeer decoration although Mr C is not so sure.

I love this gorgeous tin bought from Gail and her sister at our last fair. I really can't resist tins and seem to have them all over the house.

This is the fab vintage pop up book I bought last year.

The dogs joined in the festive fun.

I love the colours of this poinsettia Mr C bought me.

Yet another tin !

Little felt Cath Kidston dogs as well as the pretty candle my lovely girl bought me last year.

This year I stuck to pale colours on the tree and used all my crystal and vintage silvery and pale pink and blue vintage glass baubles.

The brighter colours looked great against the white branches of the 'twig'.

The lovely stocking I bought from Jo of Hesta Nesta last year was hung on the fireplace.

Mr C surprised me with this beautiful vintage book of dog drawings by an American artist. The quality of the paper and printing makes them look almost like the originals. The book was sold with the idea the prints could be removed for framing.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a relaxing break. I am off now for another slice of our home made christmas cake and another cup of coffee x

Half Term Trip

Last week we had one of our traditional half term trips to London. We sent to see Mamma Mia and loved it.

We did some shopping as you would expect and also quite a lot of window shopping ! This was the display in Church's shoe shop near Savile Row. Northampton is famous for shoe making and it was lovely to see the display in this very smart window saying 'Made In Northampton'.

We had a wander around some of the beautiful shopping arcades.

We loved this display of pastel coloured macaroons.

We then headed in to Fortnum and Masons

the shop windows were all decorated for Halloween

inside were wonderfully carved pumpkins

and pumpkin cakes.

Of course there were also plenty of Christmas decorations, this staircase looked stunning.

This is Mr Holmes outside Baker street tube station.

I am sure you can guess where this is, we decided to go to the shop on Marlebone High Street as we had never been there before. From the outside the building lacks the character of most of her other shops but inside it was exactly as you would expect.

This patchwork is actually wallpaper

I love this beautiful digital printed wallpaper but it is incredibly expensive

the shop windows were very Christmassy

I treated myself to Christmas crackers, a set of Christmas tea towels( I buy some every year), some serviettes and a tin of Christmas tags. The tags are lovely and I have already decided to use some to make a Christmas garland rather than use them all on presents.