I think I can safely say that one of my favorite Christmas films of all time is Elf. If you’ve not seen it, please do! I’ve watched it twice last weekend alone, and it often comes out during the year too to cheer me up. I know there’s plenty of Christmas classics out there but I find the film quite magical; and particularly because of the festive decorations throughout the film. In one scene Elf stays up all night to install a winter wonderland in a department store because santa is coming to visit. When the store lights up and I first see the room packed full of garlands hanging from the ceiling, snow covering every surface and sparkly fairy lights everywhere, I get a true shiver of excitement. Because I think that preparing for Christmas is possibly even better than Christmas day itself.
I love decorating my home and even the smell of tinsel is enough to get me a little more excited about the impending christmassyness. So don’t worry if you catch me sniffing a sparkly garland in B&Q in September; it’s just because I can’t wait to decorate! This year has been a be difficult for me so far, because I’ve been working so much and have just been away for a week, which means I’ve not yet decorated my house. I find this difficult because I’m usually the first person I know to put up their tree and get the garlands out. So I’m really feeling rather un-Christmassy at the moment, and I won’t feel quite right until I get the decorations out and turn my house into a winter wonderland of my very own.
So I’m going to be doing a lot of paper crafting over the Christmas period to make snowflakes, paper chains. Here’s a fab tutorial from renewsing.com on making your own Christmas bauble garlands.
- Punch circles from wrapping paper or craft paper
- Fold each piece in half with the pattern on the inside
- Glue the outside of the folded piece (the “wrong” side), leaving a couple of millimeters from the fold bare of glue
- Stick to the wrong side of another folded circle to create a “T” shape when open. Repeat with the other sides until you’ve used four pieces and formed a bauble. Try two different patterns in the one bauble, or a single pattern for each bauble and alternate when threading together
- Use a thick mattress needle to thread the string through the center of each bauble (there should be a gap right in the middle that wasn’t glued).
