The Thrifty Christmas Gift Swap 2018

 I can't believe it's already time to talk about the gift swap! But autumn is definitely here - I'm looking out of my window at yellowing leaves - and so that means it's time to start planning for Christmas.

This will be the seventh year of the thrifty Christmas gift swap, and it's always so much fun to have participants making, buying and thrifting cool gifts for each other. Unlike a lot of other swaps, you do not need to be a blogger to take part: last year was about a 50/50 split between bloggers and non-bloggers. And don't panic if you're not a natural crafter, it's also totally ok to decide to buy all your gifts.

So, if you're interested, take a look at the guidelines below and then drop me an email to sign up.

How It Works
1. Send your name, address, blog address (if you have one), social media links and any extra information to jbistheinitial@gmail.com by November 1st. Include in your email as much detail about your likes and dislikes as possible. You could also include links to Amazon or Etsy wishlists, to give your buyer an idea of your tastes.
2. Once you receive the information about your recipient you can start putting together a box of bought, thrifted and handmade goodies you think your recipient will love.  In previous years gifts have ranged from framed animation strips from the giftees favourite film, to Christmas mix CDs, to cool brooches and embroidery hoops, to secondhand books.
3. Try to limit yourself to a £12 spend (not including postage).
4. Pop your parcel in the post by December 10th (although try and be a bit more prompt if sending overseas).
5. Sit back and wait to receive your own box of delights from a mystery giver!

The Thrifty Christmas Gift Swap

I can't believe it's already time to talk about the gift swap: I swear it was March just a few days ago. But autumn is definitely here - I'm looking out of my window at yellowing leaves and grey skies - and so that means it's time to start planning for Christmas.

This will be the sixth year of the thrifty Christmas gift swap, and it's always so much fun to have participants making, buying and thrifting cool gifts for each other. Unlike a lot of other swaps, you do not need to be a blogger to take part: last year was about a 50/50 split between bloggers and non-bloggers. And don't panic if you're not a natural crafter, it's also totally ok to decide to buy all your gifts.

So, if you're interested, take a look at the guidelines below and then drop me an email to sign up.

How It Works
1. Send your name, address, blog address (if you have one), social media links and any extra information to jbistheinitial@gmail.com by November 1st. Include in your email as much detail about your likes and dislikes as possible. You could also include links to Amazon or Etsy wishlists, to give your buyer an idea of your tastes.
2. Once you receive the information about your recipient you can start putting together a box of bought, thrifted and handmade goodies you think your recipient will love.  In previous years gifts have ranged from framed animation strips from the giftees favourite film, to Christmas mix CDs, to cool brooches and embroidery hoops, to secondhand books.
3. Try to limit yourself to a £12 spend (not including postage).
4. Pop your parcel in the post by December 10th (although try and be a bit more prompt if sending overseas).
5. Sit back and wait to receive your own box of delights from a mystery giver!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

The presents are (mostly) wrapped, the cake is decorated, the candles are lit, and Christmas is truly on its way.

I've had a lovely, busy few weeks of festive activity. The last few Saturdays have been filled with socialising, from afternoon tea with Becca & Elle, to Christmas drinks with Thomas and our friend Rose. This week, Rebs came to stay and we went to a brilliant benefit gig for Leicester Rape Crisis featuring Sara Pascoe, Josie Long and Grace Petrie, and the next evening I went to Leicester Cathedral for their annual Seven Lessons & Carols service. Despite having been an atheist for the past twenty years, my nostalgia for the Christmas's of my childhood (which were spent singing in the choir at church) leads me back to that institution every Christmas. I sing the carols with gusto and enjoy the traditions which meant so much to me when I was a child, before sloughing it all off come December 26th.

Unexpectedly, and wonderfully, I have almost two weeks off starting today. Tomorrow, Thomas and I have a Christmas Eve of reading, country walks, Prosecco drinking, and festive film watching planned, before driving to my mums' house on Christmas morning. And so, in the spirit of the season, I'm signing off social media and blogging for a few days. Have a wonderful Christmas, folks, and I'll see you on the other side!

Photo An Hour: Saturday 17th December

In what I think is a record, I managed to remember Photo An Hour for the fourth month in a row, yay me! However, I mostly used my phone to take photographs yesterday and some of them aren't transferring properly from there to my laptop, and I'm frankly too hungover to work out what the problem is. So while some of these are different to the photos I posted to Instagram during the day, they were all taken at or near the appropriate hour.

For #PhotoAnHour last December, I had a lovely, festive at-home day of wrapping, reading, baking, and Strictly-watching. My day this year wasn't all that different, actually, although I did eventually leave the house (hence the hangover).

9am:
It's basically impossible to come up with different first photos every month: I've done my bed, my bedroom, my book... yesterday morning I woke up at about half past 8 to find Missy cowering from the washing machine (her greatest enemy), so at 9am I was still sitting on our bed with her, trying to get her to settle down to sleep. Hence the not-terribly-exciting photo of my dressing gown and the quilt.

10am:
By 10am the evil washing machine had finished tormenting her and Missy was up and begging for food. She's been mostly disinterested in the Christmas tree, but decided this morning that perhaps Dreamies were hidden in amongst the parcels, and had a good old nose around.

11am:
I'm making a few embroidered hoops as gifts this Christmas and spent a couple of hours in the morning working on this one (while trying to discourage the cat from chasing the thread as I sewed). Just a tiny peek, as I don't want to spoil the surprise.

Midday:
The first of my missing photographs was of Missy staring at my embroidery. Ah well, I had too many cat photos in this post anyway. At midday, the postman had just delivered a stack of mail, including - thrillingly - these amazing Shakespeare stamps, which are destined for our wedding invitations.

1pm:
A knock at the door, another postie, and the delivery of two boxes - a Thrifty Gift Swap parcel from Em and the most wonderful box of treats from Alex, which included The Best Card In The World. Just look at it: hundreds of Missy cats!

2pm:

Some final bits of gift wrapping to complete, with the requisite Christmas music playing in the background, of course.

3pm:
This may just look like another obsessive photograph of my cat (and is, undeniably, that too) BUT it's also capturing for posterity the moment Missy decided to try sitting on my lap again! You may remember from Photo An Hour in November that she'd only just started sitting on our laps.... well it lasted about three blissful weeks, and then she seemed to regress and went back to being very skittish and wary of us. So I was over the moon that she decided to settle in for a cuddle yesterday afternoon (even if it meant I couldn't finish my embroidery).

4pm:

Up to now I'd been in my pyjamas all day (BLISS!) but it was finally time to get dressed and venture into town for some last bits of Christmas shopping.

5pm:
My Daily Mail-reading, Brexit-voting step-grandmother is spending Christmas with us at my mums' house. What to get a racist old lady? Why, a Fair-trade scarf from India, of course. She probably won't even notice, but it cheered me up.

6pm:

While trying to find a pub that wasn't rammed, we walked past this beautiful front door adorned with beautiful wreath.

7pm:

Not only did we find a pub, but it had a lovely quiet upstairs area with tables - hooray! Meanwhile, I was very taken with Rose's necklace.

8pm:

Still in the pub, and this photo illustrates nicely why I'm so hungover, because apart from this packet of crisps, I didn't have anything to eat. Oops.

10pm:

I think that, strictly speaking, this was about 10.30pm when we finally left the pub and wended our merry ways home...

11pm:

...where I unpacked my bag and remembered that I'd bought myself the best fox socks earlier.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Sarah asserted this week that bloggers fall into two camps at Christmas: those who have a theme, and those who have an ethos. But I reckon I have both. From the piles of foraged greenery to the homemade tree decorations, my Christmas decorating theme is simple, natural beauty with just a dash of glitz.

And my ethos? Probably much the same. For me, Christmas - and the far more exciting run-up to the big day - is about small, simple pleasures but with an added dose of luxury. Whether it's lighting scented candles, spending time with loved ones, settling down with a good book next to a roaring fire, or drinking my own body weight in Prosecco, December gives me the chance to do all my favourite things in the name of festivity.

And one of my favourite things to do is decorate the house. No hall is left un-decked; stand still long enough in my house come December and you'll probably find yourself draped in fairy lights and sporting an ivy crown.

As I wrote about last week in my wreath how-to, evergreens are one of my favourite things with which to decorate. Every year I raid the local hedgerows and gather armfuls of greenery to pile high on the mantlepieces, intertwined with LED fairy lights and baubles for added sparkle.

This gorgeous Dashwood Studio Christmas Village fabric (from Crafty Sew & So, a great workshop and haberdashery space in Leicester) is a close match to the George at ASDA festive bedlinen I missed out on last year and have sulked about ever since. I used it to make some festive cushion covers, as well as whipping up a new stocking to hang by my fireplace, so that even our bedroom has a dash of Christmas charm.

Before last Christmas, I'd never thought of fresh flowers as a decorating essential. Then Blossoming Gifts kindly sent me a festive bunch to review and now I don't think I'll ever go without. My budget this year didn't stretch to a fancy mail order bouquet, but Aldi came up trumps with bargain Fairtrade roses and berry sprigs, which I combined with eucalyptus from my mum's garden.

And while I still think my house could do with MOAR DECORATIONS, it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas here...

Made: An Evergreen Wreath

This is an edited repost from my now-defunct blog, Words That Can Only Be Your Own

For me, nothing quite says 'Christmas' like bringing boughs of evergreens into the house. From pagan yule logs to modern wreaths, the custom of using holly, ivy and other evergreens to decorate the house in December is an ancient one that has lasted thousands of years. However, wreaths made from fresh foliage can be very expensive to buy - understandable, as they're time-consuming to put together. But with a bit of foraging for free greenery plus an hour of patience and sore fingers, you can make a wreath that's just as beautiful as a store-bought one.

You will need:

A wreath base (usually made of moss over a wire ring - I found mine on eBay for less than £2)

Armfuls of greenery - at least two different kinds but the sky's the limit. I used cypress, holly, eucalyptus, ivy, pine and hebe

Florists wire

Secateurs or strong scissors

3 metres ribbon

Assortment of decorations - I dried some orange slices and teamed them with foraged pine cones and cinnamon sticks tied together with scraps of ribbon

1. First, forage for your greenery. You don't need to live in the countryside for this: I picked up the pinecones from under a tree on a nearby industrial estate, the eucalyptus was from my mum's back garden, the hebe from a shrub in my yard, the ivy cut on various walks along the local canal, and the cypress, holly and pine from friends gardens.

2. Soak your ring [snigger] in water before squeezing out any excess.

3. Your wreath will be made up of multiple bundles of greenery, each affixed to the base. Gather a small piece of 3-4 different evergreens and pull together to form a bouquet. As I had 6 different kinds of evergreens, I varied the contents (so one had holly, pine and eucalyptus, while the next had hebe, ivy and cypress, for instance). 

4. Bend a length of wire to form a U-shape at one end, approx. 1 inch long. Place the U at the base of the bouquet (with the remaining wire pointing away from it) and then wind the wire around the bundle two or three times, to hold the bundle together securely. You should be left with about 15cm of wire still pointing away from the bouquet.

5. Push the long piece of wire through your base, bend and push back in again to secure. 

6. Repeat, laying each bundle of greenery so it points in the same direction and overlaps with the previous one, until the wreath base is covered.

7. At this point you may find some bundles need another piece of wire looped around and pushed into the base to ensure they're completely secure.

8. Again using wire, attach the decorations at intervals. 

9. Cut 2 metres from your ribbon and loop it through the inside of the wreath. Tie the remaining metre into a bow around the hanging ribbon, trimming the ends neatly.

10. Once it's hanging up you may need to trim some edges: I found my eucalyptus especially needed a bit of a prune.

11. Step back and admire your work! Wreaths made from fresh foliage will survive for about three to four weeks if hung outside in the cold. 

The Thrifty Christmas Gift Swap

It's your last chance to sign up for this year's Thrifty Gift Swap! If you want to get involved, see below for details.

1. Send your name, address, blog address (if you have one) and extra information to jbistheinitial@gmail.com by Sunday November 6th. Include in your email as much detail about your likes and dislikes as possible, so your giver has a starting point.
2. Once you receive the information about your recipient (by November 10th at the latest), you can start putting together a box of bought, thrifted and handmade goodies you think your recipient will love.  In previous years gifts have ranged from framed animation strips from the giftees favourite film, to Christmas mix CDs, to cool brooches and embroidery hoops, to secondhand books.
3. Limit yourself to a £12 spend (not including postage).
4. Pop your parcel in the post by December 10th (although try and be a bit more prompt if sending overseas).
5. Sit back and wait to receive your own box of delights from a mystery giver!

The Thrifty Christmas Gift Swap Is Back

I can't believe I'm talking about the C-word when just a week ago I was lying on a sun lounger in 30c heat. But autumn is definitely here - I'm looking out of my window at yellowing leaves and grey skies - and so that means it's time to start planning for Christmas.

This will be the fifth year of the thrifty Christmas gift swap, and it's always so much fun to have participants making, buying and thrifting cool gifts for each other. Unlike a lot of other swaps, you do not need to be a blogger to take part: last year was about a 50/50 split between bloggers and non-bloggers.

So, if you're interested, take a look at the guidelines below and then drop me an email to sign up.

How It Works
1. Send your name, address, blog address (if you have one) and extra information to jbistheinitial@gmail.com by Sunday November 6th. Include in your email as much detail about your likes and dislikes as possible, so your giver has a starting point.
2. Once you receive the information about your recipient (by November 10th at the latest), you can start putting together a box of bought, thrifted and handmade goodies you think your recipient will love.  In previous years, gifts ranged from framed animation strips from the giftees favourite film, to Christmas mix CDs, to cool brooches and embroidery hoops, to secondhand books.
3. Limit yourself to a £12 spend (not including postage).
4. Pop your parcel in the post by December 10th (although try and be a bit more prompt if sending overseas).
5. Sit back and wait to receive your own box of delights from a mystery giver!