It started off yesterday morning after a visit to our new out of town shopping area, which opened last year and is called Family Village - Limoges I find it quite strange to have an English title in rural France.
All the shops were full of beautiful Christmas decorations, with areas set out in different coloured themes.
I thought back to 23 yrs ago to our first Christmas here in France. The house was still in it's very early stage of renovation and our only thoughts were of buying building materials and making bedrooms up in the grenier. When we first arrived we stored most of our furniture in the large barn, plus everything that was not immediately needed, only unpacking the essentials and everything else stayed packed in boxes. So even the thought of looking for the box labelled Christmas decorations was not on my priority list of things to do.
Then our daughter returned back home after a not so successful trip around Germany and plans to spend the winter in the ski resorts. This was like a gift from heaven to have her back home with the family and for me to share some feminine things in life, away from sand and cement, especially for the Christmas holiday.
The week before the fete my daughter and I went with our two Labrador dogs for a walk into our woods searching for all the seasonal greenery associated with this festive period. Our first find was a small spruce pine tree just the thing for our tree to decorate and we were able to dig it up and take it home. For me it was like something out of a children's story book. being able to find all we needed to make our Christmas, all there on our own land. Then we found the Mistletoe high up at the top of an old Cherry tree. This was like the icing on the cake to end our forage in our woods. We arrived back to the house with arms full of greenery ready to make a building site look like a home ready for the Christmas celebrations.
Our son & daughter, so young.
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The wood burner had just been installed, not completely finished
but just the place to hang our Christmas stockings.
but just the place to hang our Christmas stockings.
This was our Labrador Della's favourite place.
She was also decorated with a bit of red Christmas ribbon.
Looking back at our first Christmas in France.
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Now I need to think about decorations for this Christmas.
Do I stay with my usual theme, of red, white and gold, or do I change.?
This is one of my styles and sometimes I do a country style,
that's when I put every decoration I possess on the tree.
This was Christmas 2006
when we were fortunate to have all the family together.
I've just been looking at my favourite Danish magazine Isabellas
There seems to be a lot of purple for Christmas his year.
I love these cones made out of corrugated cardboard and trimmed with fancy ribbon.
These would be nice as a table decoration with a little gift tucked inside for each person.
Or with a ribbon attached so that it could hang from somewhere.
I think this weekend I'll have to get my box of decorations out and think about the colour theme.
I'm beginning to like the purple, and Carol from Parisbreakfasts told me that purple is
THE colour in Paris at the moment, & if you read her blog you will know !
although she didn't mention it being used for Christmas decorations !!
What about you, do you have a favourite colour theme or do you like to change?
I'd love to hear about your preferences.
A bientot.
Barbara Lilian
