Flowers for the holidays

Back again after a week of rest and family time for Christmas.   A huge thank you to everyone who has been by here while I was away, and thank you especially for your kind Christmas wishes.

Don't you love this week between Christmas and New Year?  A sort of hiatus, where the daily routine is put on hold, and it feels like we've stopped in time.

For us, this weekend marks a pause between guests and entertaining, and it's always a moment when I like to freshen up the Christmas decor and start to prepare for New Year's Eve.

I found these stunning double Amaryllis, totally dreamy and soft coloured.  They started as a large bouquet in a giant vase but with the warmth of the house several of the stems snapped, so I changed them to individual jars and scattered Christmas baubles around them.

 I hope that your holidays are peaceful and enjoyable,

 no matter how many mouths there may be to feed.

 

Wishing you a very happy Christmas

Ghetto, Gibson and all of my family here in Normandy, join me in wishing you a Happy Christmas and the very best for the new year ahead.  A rather kitsch picture we know, but we thought you may not mind a little fantasy in this festive season!

I am taking a few days off from the blog, a time to enjoy family near and far, and remember the most important things in life. 

Thank you for your presence this year, I am so fortunate to have readers like you.   You encourage and inspire me.  You take my breath away with your beautiful blogs and clever comments.  You make me laugh out loud, and sometimes you even make me cry .... blogging is indeed  a wonderful adventure.

A special hello to those who visited me here in Normandy this year, and to those who are booked to visit in the months to come - the blog has brought many wonderful people to my door, I hope that will continue for a while to come.
  

2012 has been fun here at MFCH, and Gibson and Ghetto tell me they intend to do everything possible to make next year even better.

A very Joyeux Noël to you all!

 

some vintage decorating and a calmer mood

Thank you for all the kind emails after my 'headless chicken' post yesterday.  Today I am glad to say that the panic is over and all is calm and happy here!

Check:

Shopping .... all done

Gifts .... almost all wrapped

House .... tidy and decorated

Baking ....  well underway

This evening there will be more friends here for dinner, everyone eager to get into the holiday spirit ... sometimes I think that I love the lead up to christmas more than the actual christmas day!

Just sharing a couple of not very satisfactory pictures of a mantelpiece decor.  It looks better in real life, but you'll have to take my word on that!  

So happy to have found these old enamel letters, and I found that the best way of standing them up was leaning against vintage creamware jugs, so that sorted the colour scheme for me!

If you have a moment to stop by tomorrow, Gibson and Ghetto have prepared something special for you that I think you may enjouy ...

à demain and enjoy this festive weekend!

the very white, very french christmas

  greetings to you all for this pre-christmas weekend

this is very nearly my last post before our christmas celebrations

 I would like to tell you that the house is calm, filled only with the sound of children humming happy songs, the fire crackling and the sweet perfume of festive baking in the kitchen, ....

but.....

unfortunately that is so far from the truth

 that I hate to even to talk about it ...hmmm..

'headless chicken' would be the most accurate description 

of this xmas blogger, but hey ho, c'est la vie ...
we'll get there in the end

 so today, I bring you images from many talented 

French blogs, who are making this christmas very 

white and very creative, 
girls such as  

Resonances, 

 Mo,

 Manon 21 

and Art de la Curiosité

 I have found inspiration in these pictures, as well 

as many others that I've pinned to my Noël page,

I hope they give you some great ideas too

à demain mes amis
and happy preparations

xxxooxxx

 

my stylish french girlfriends - Estelle

Today I bring you another stylish and talented French girlfriend, creative, living in a beautiful home and fun to be with .... what more could you ask.

Estelle is the girl behind these beautiful christmas decors that were on sale at Christelle's last weekend.

 She lives in  a beautiful house in our village, I showed you some pictures of her home in the spring.

Like myself, Estelle loves to 'chine' [sheen], hunt for brocante.  Her house is filled with beautiful furniture that she finds in fairs and at dealers here in Normandy.

I am pleased to say that she will soon be opening a little brocante store, opened at weekends or by appointment and based at her home.  Great news for me!!  And another good address for my brocante hunting guests here.

Estelle is originally from Normandy, but lived for many years in Paris.  She has styled clothes for children, and done some interior design, but above all, for her it is being creative that is most important.

At the moment her speciality is the little white houses that have been used for her christmas decorations, and in a few weeks time she'll have found something different!  That's how clever she is.

She writes a blog called Mo by Maurice, from where she sometimes sells 

her creations,   but they sell out predictably fast!

When I stopped by yesterday, she showed me this beautiful hand painted sign, that she found at a fair recently, it says "Mme Yvonna!" and the colours are just perfect!  She'll be putting it up for sale, I won't be the only one keeping my eyes open for that one!

Her Christmas tree décor is in keeping with the rest of her house.  Simple white lights, tiny white home made bunting and advent scripts clipped around the tree.

I love this dining area adjacent to her kitchen 

Voilà, a little tour of the home of a very talented girl.  I am sure that in the spring you'll be hearing about the opening of her store.

I hope your christmas preparations are going well, I'm hopelessly behind on mine .... why am I not surprised?! ....

gifts for very parisian christmas stockings

With a large family to buy gifts for, christmas shopping can sometimes teeter dangerously on that fine line between pleasure and a chore - you know what I mean?

The truth is that, while I love to find gifts to wrap and leave beneath the tree, the things I have the most fun finding are the smaller gifts for the christmas stockings that appear before dawn on Christmas day at the foot of every bed in our home.

A mix of small,  and inexpensive treats that are simply there to bring a smile to everyone's face at the start of the day.  A silly pair of socks, a lipstick, a small box of chocolates ... in this house everyone has a stocking waiting for them on Christmas morn - even the dogs!

The stockings in the pictures were made from some worn out pieces of tapestry that I found in a country fair one day - they don't hold much, but they are sort of pretty and timless.

So here are a couple of my favourite gifts that are being slipped into stockings this year ... with a decidedly Parisian theme ....

from the wonderful Maison du Chocolat, these little chocolate beads, that are ready to mix into warm milk to make the perfect hot chocolate

For a much loved dog I would buy a dog collar from Hermes ...but won't actually because my dogs would simply lose the collar in the forest, so they'll get a nice looking collar without the Hermes price tag ......

one lucky girl will be getting this sweet little book by the  talented Betty Lou Phillips,  The Night Before Christmas in Paris, not only are the illustrations delightful, the story charming but it is all in rhyme which I adore!!

another will receive Fragonard soaps , a major favourite of mine, and Fragonard is one of the oldest French perfumers.  The packaging is perfectly parisian and the soaps smell divine, I love to keep them in cupboards until needed.

If my girls were still little enough,  I would buy the classic by Bemelmans, Madeline.  I love the illustrations of Paris, and actually I know this book practically by heart, having read it out loud so often.

A notepad is always so useful, and this one comes from the Louvre museum boutique.  The cover is an extract from a painting by Eugenie Boudin - just love those colours ...

and of course there'll be many many more little gifts, but I can't sit here writing about them or they'll never get wrapped!