Christmas finishing touches

I wonder if you’re feeling like me this week, that Christmas is a bit of a white knuckle ride just now. I did so well getting organised for our first round of Christmas which was in Newcastle last week. We had a brilliant time and I’ll tell you all about it when I come up for air which should be next Friday. The problem is of course that having a few days away from my desk has set me back again so I feel as if I’m bull-running my way through at the moment, trying to get work wrapped up and there’s the small matter of planning our family Christmas too. So today’s post is going to be one of those thinking out loud ones as I work out my Christmas finishing touches – the little things that give it a boost and make time spent in the ordinary surroundings of home feel extra special.

The thing is that it isn’t always easy to elevate the place where your everyday life is carried out, if it was, none of us would have the urge for new surroundings when we go on holiday. It’s all well and good putting the Christmas tree up and a few lights in the garden – and if you’re having a low key Christmas that may feel like enough. For me though, I want to transform the ordinary and luckily so does Mal. I suppose it’s because of our retail background – nothing could have been more magical than creating Christmas at Selfridges. By this time of year we’d have spent months on working out how to make it sing. Mal was head of the creative department so amongst other things he oversaw the theming and production of the Christmas windows. In those days we stuck to H Gordon Selfridge’s edict that they should be the store’s Christmas gift to the city and not a single piece of merchandise should be displayed. They were there to be purely magical and they had a huge budget behind them so Mal and his team could let their imaginations run riot. Everything was made in-house and we had a big team of carpenters in a warehouse in Paddington who could bring even the wildest fantasies to life. The chosen theme was then threaded throughout the store with every single department given its own sparkle – the right music was carefully chosen for each one and there was even cinnamon fragrance layered on top to boost the shopping mood. We notice now that this doesn’t happen any more. Even the big store groups are sparsely decorated and whatever there is is uniform, nothing is bespoke now.

But anyway now we do our Christmas thing in our own home (on a much, much smaller scale – and budget!). We zone each room and take Christmas right up the stairs into the bathrooms and bedrooms, out into the garden and dress the front. We’re often referred to as the Christmas house in the village and we probably shoot ourselves in the foot because we end up hosting a lot but that makes the effort all worth it. However it does mean I’m feeling frazzled this week, I’ve started decorating some of the rooms but we still have most of it to do this weekend. So with focus in mind, today is all about thinking through the Christmas finishing touches that make your home feel like a storybook version of its ordinary self.

So, retail training teaches you to consider any space in the context of the five senses. Everyone thinks about the visual at Christmas but it’s more effective if you take it beyond that. The delight often lies in the touchpoints, those familiar parts of your home that you encounter so often that you don’t even notice them any more. How can you add a little magic to them? Like most people I start with decorating the tree but then take baubles and hanging ornaments all through the house – suspending them from the light fittings…

…the door knobs…

…the kitchen cabinets…

(I’ve had my felt mistletoe for years but you can buy it here)

Felt mistletoe

…the banisters on the stairs and so on – I keep things traditional in the old part of the house and more modern in the new bits. There’s something really interesting going on this year. All of the big retailers are reporting that the decorations that are selling fastest are the ones that are kitsch and we could really see it when we were looking for new ideas in John Lewis last week. I suspect it’s because most people already have collections of traditional baubles that they’ve collected over the years but like to update them with a bit of whimsy – and this year we all really need a bit of light-hearted whimsy in our lives. There are some great options and they work really well as statement pieces in my view. I set them on their own rather than on the tree like this rather beautiful chameleon and frog on a mirrored tray…

Things are selling out fast now but if you’re looking for an update, this year’s whimsies include:

Pride baubles…

Pride bauble

… and popcorn…

Popcorn bauble

… peacocks…

Peacock bauble

…lovely joy balloon style lettering…

Joy in balloon style

… and kitsch snowglobes.

Snow globe

Wreaths can be really useful for adding a little extra to coffee tables – this is how I use them…

… and this one’s still in stock.

Red berry wreath

While we’re on the subject of kitsch I found myself considering tinsel for the first time in years…

(and while I was deep in thought my camera roll shows me that Mal was in his own world taking selfies…)

There were some other really lovely ideas for Christmas finishing touches in the store displays. I thought this was a great way of doing a place setting using a letter bauble that could be taken home as a forever gift. It looks so effective layered with a tassel napkin ring, a gold bowl and a contrasting silver placemat:

Letter bauble; tassel napkin ring; gold bowl; silver beaded placemat

And they’d used a decanter on a raised cake stand as a centrepiece rather than flowers.

Glass decanter; cake stand; gold place mat; white onion baubles; star bauble

As well as baubles I pop Christmas books next to chairs where people can pause for a moment – you can buy them for next to nothing from second hand bookshops so they make great value Christmas decorations and you’ll be surprised by how often they’re picked up and flicked through.

I could go on and on because there’s no such thing as overdoing Christmas in our house. I came home from our village choir practice in a really Christmassy mood last night so I did the windows – a classic theme in the little windows at the 1715 front (I know the frames look shabby but they’re original and the listing means the cost of replacing them is equivalent to all of our arms and legs – we’ll do it ‘one day’). I’ll sort the window boxes out tomorrow too, replacing the autumn purples with red cyclamen. The decorations are oversized trade retail ones so I can’t link them but they make the little ones smile every morning as they trot past on their way to the village school.

We go more contemporary in our modern extension at the back. I’m always asked how we fix these snowflakes – Mal uses retail sky hooks with clear VM thread.

On Christmas Eve I dress our bed in cosy red flannel but there was fabulous bedding in JL too, so beautifully done.

Christmas character bedding; brushed cotton check bedding; velvet throw; Christmas cushion selection

And there’s even Christmas loo roll!

Christmas loo roll

Christmas fragrance

So those are the touchpoints and they cover off sight and touch. Let’s talk about this year’s Christmas fragrance. For at least the last 30 years Airwick has been making apple and cinnamon plug-in diffusers. They sound horribly synthetic but because the fragrance was largely spice based (cinnamon oil) they really weren’t. As I’ve told you before, Selfridges used to buy it in huge quantities to pump through the store. I’ve managed to scour Ebay in previous years to find refills but they’ve all gone now so I’ll have to try the replacement (mulled wine – likely to be synthetic and grim) and report back.

So in Newcastle last week I had to rethink fragrance layering. It’s always mattered to me and after being trained in it extensively back in 2016 I’m more aware of it than ever. There are three dominant fragrance families around for Christmas this year: classic cinnamon, fir/pine and woodsmoke. For classic cinnamon it’s hard to beat The White Company’s Winter. I find the fragrance oil to be better value than the candles in terms of throw (i.e. the extent of travel and area that it penetrates within a room). The thing to remember is that there’s a big variation in the quality of high end candles and it’s down partly to the type of wax blend that they use and also the strength and source of the fragrance oil. So, for example, you’ll find that brands such as Aldi sometimes have access to exactly the same oil as some of the premium brands but they only use a tiny percentage of it so you have the same fragrance without the throw. It makes their candles a good choice for burning at your desk or in a small loo space but pretty hopeless if you have a large open plan room.

However it doesn’t always mean that more expensive candles are better. Candles are very cheap to make and the price that people will pay for them makes them very profitable so some brands see them as cash cows, adding them on to their ranges for a good return. Some use the trick of ‘topping’ whereby they’ll create a candle with a low percentage of fragrance oil, maybe a 2% blend but then top it with a few millimetres of 5-7%. That means that when you buy it in the shop it smells great and when you burn it for the first time it does too. However as it goes on, the fragrance weakens – and most people just assume that they’ve grown used to it. So you can see why sometimes it makes sense to buy the fragrance oil alone and use it in a diffuser.

Even then things become complicated – spice oils are resinous and so can be made cheaply from the original source, floral and botanicals are much, much more expensive so are generally recreated synthetically. And it also depends how an oil burns… so you can see why I’m very, very careful about which home fragrance brands I recommend. I often get requests from readers to mention small companies that their friends have set up from home but I couldn’t ever do it with this – good home fragrance requires a lot of tech and knowledge behind it. One last thing – don’t keep your candles for best – like perfume or soap they go off quite quickly so burn them when you get them. As you’ve gathered I could talk about it for hours but let’s move on to my top three suggestions for this year’s fragrance trends.

Cinnamon

Winter – buy the oil unless you particularly want a special candle version – the botanical with its pressed flowers for example. Otherwise save your money and buy good quality church candles that will last for ages and burn the oil for fragrance.

If you’re looking for an oil burner, you don’t need to spend more than this – don’t forget good quality tealights too (cheap ones are a false economy, they always disappoint).

Ceramic oil burner

Fir/Pine

Avoid the White Company one – it smells like pine scented loo cleaner. This French version however is delicate and crisp, it really does make you feel as if you’re standing in a snowy forest of firs.

Smoky log fires

This is a fragrance that’s really popular at the moment. I suspect it’s down to the trend towards nostalgia. Even though our house smells of log fires because we light them as soon as it gets very cold, I’ve bought one of these Fireside candles for our modern extension. I’ve found you need the warmth of the wax to get the best out of this one, don’t use the oil, it soon becomes acrid. And if you have a sophisticated nose then Library is the greatest of all the log fire candles, it’s tinged with the fragrance of leather bound books and it really is something else. Sacristy is along the same lines but touched with incense rather than leather. Again you need the wax candle blend to soften and warm the smoky fragrance.

Christmas Flavours

This isn’t, and never will be, a food blog. I’m a baker not a cook, I can rave about home-made cakes and biscuits for hours but give me an Ottolenghi cook book and I’ll point you towards the nearest good northern pie shop. I had my first taste of mince pies and mulled wine last week when we were away sitting outside in the frosty air, it was a perfect moment. When we put the tree up I’ll open my favourite tipple, the one that I discovered in Jerez – East India Solera which to me is Christmas in a bottle.

East India Solera

And next week I’m going to find a new Christmas cocktail recipe or two. I’m looking for one that’s minty and fresh that will work as a pre-dinner drink – I’m thinking about playing around with Kendal Mint Cake. And then this year I’ve decided to do Brandy Alexanders on Christmas Day because nobody ever wants Christmas pudding so I’m going to serve those after the meal instead. I’m planning to practice adding either nutmeg or cinnamon to the classic recipe – which is here if you like the idea.

Serves one so upscale for your numbers

45ml Cognac
30ml dark crème de cacao
30ml single cream
15ml egg white

Pop a coupe glass into the freezer 30 minutes in advance. Pour the Cognac, dark crème de cacao, cream and egg white into a cocktail shaker then add a handful of ice and give it a really good shake. Strain into a chilled glass and enjoy. My plan is to try infusing the cream with spice first but if I run out of time I’ll just add a dusting of nutmeg or cinnamon to the glass – I’ll let you know how it goes.

So that’s my contribution to your Christmas foodscape which leaves the final sense… hearing.

Christmas Music

Have you done your Spotify Wrapped yet? It’s been keeping my WhatsApps buzzing all week, I’m delighted to be in the top 1% of Jungle’s fans this year – or I was until the eldest achieved 0.005% status for them. Anyway it doesn’t get much more personal than this. For me Christmas music starts with our various village choir performances which start tonight (some might say that music doesn’t come into our performances but there’s plenty of passion and gusto!). I play Michael Buble on my big prep day on 23rd December when I close the kitchen door, do whatever cooking needs to be done and then lose myself in baking. On our way back from the panto on Christmas Eve we belt out Now’s 100 Christmas Hits. On Christmas morning it’s Carols from Kings and then the boys take over… to avoid that happening I’m very open to new suggestions, the comments are back so please do add them there if you have any.

So my job this weekend is decorating the tree, then the house, then unpacking my deliveries and hoping I’m on top of present buying. I have Christmas card letters to write and I must do the food planning because at the moment I’m holding my delivery slot with only two bottles of champagne in the basket (which would give me a good Christmas day but nobody else!). If you’re with me on Instagram/Facebook you’ll have seen that after meeting a couple of very encouraging ladies in Newcastle who said they missed my posts there, I’ve pledged to put up a new outfit every day. And I’ll be back here with one last winter try-on on Tuesday and then on Friday we’ll have a proper Christmassy midlife lately catch-up. Have a lovely weekend – for once I’ll be very glad to get to the other side of mine!

Christmas finishing touches – a few ideas

Christmas finishing touches