CHRISTMAS HOME TOUR _ An English Countryside Cottage Decorated for the Holidays_2

Hi Homeworthy! Thanks for coming to visit me again. I am Rebecca and this is my English Country Cottage at Christmas! Come on in! This holiday season, get ready to unwrap the most magnificent holiday homes with Homeworthy's 25 Days of Christmas. For the month of December, we'll take you inside the most heartwarming houses decked out for the holidays in true festive fashion. From twinkling lights and elegantly trimmed trees to sparkling ornaments and cozy holiday charm, these homes capture the warmth, wonder and beauty that make this season so special. So join us as Homeworthy celebrates 25 Days of Christmas. The magic starts now! Raise your glass! Cheers! Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, I'm Rebecca Lovett, my English Country Cottage. I am a social media content creator, that's a really long title, and I would love to welcome you into my Christmas cottage on the Suffolk-Cambridge border in England. We moved here 11 years ago. We moved from the north down south and we wanted to be closer to our friends who actually live in Cambridge, so we drew a circle around there and we looked at about 36 properties in three weekends and we were very clear we didn't want a thatch, we didn't want listed, we didn't want too much work. We wanted something with character but we didn't want to be too rural but we did want to be in the countryside and not one of the houses lit us up and then we drove here and got severely lost several times before we found it and then we drove into, well there wasn't even a drive then actually, and saw this crumbly old cottage with a mossy thatched roof and fell completely and utterly head over heels in love with it. It was magical. It was like a storybook, there was no one around and the agent was actually late so we were able to just to wander around the garden and peek through the little windows and I think it had stolen our hearts before we even walked through the door and then we walked through the door and walked into every single room and we saw the beams that were all slanted and the floors that were wonky and each step we took we kept saying oh no oh it's really lovely oh no look at this oh and we knew that we were going to end up with exactly what we didn't want and we didn't care because we just fell in love with this cottage. I love decorating for Christmas, it's like the freedom that you don't get when you're actually decorating your home initially because when you're decorating initially you're thinking about colour schemes and you're thinking about how long will that paint last and will it work with the fabric whereas for Christmas you can just go a bit crazy and that's what I love. I do something different each year and I don't think about it I just start and that's generally how I do my life actually I just go with it see what happens but as you can see I really love colour so when I first started I started with silver and gold and white really pure and beautiful and then bit by bit pinks crept in and then reds crept in and and I can't help it it's what I love and I think particularly at Christmas you need warmth and colour and joy and cosiness and where we live it is remote and it is rural and we are surrounded at the moment by really muddy dark fields and it's dark when we wake up and it's dark by three o'clock so you need to inject light and colour and fun so I bring in as much of the garden as I can carry and I throw it all over every painting and beam and piano and wherever I can find anywhere and then I put lots and lots of fairy lights up so actually the cottage is probably lighter at Christmas than it is for most of the year. I use lots of candles lots of flowers faux and real and essentially I just throw Christmas wherever I can. This is our sitting room and this is generally where we spend most of our time over Christmas sitting around chatting and playing board games and it's all really based around the fire because it does get really cold in our cottage so this amazing wood burner heats this entire room which is just wonderful it looks beautiful it's super cozy and you can look dreamily and romantically into the flames later at night when you might have had a bit too much mulled wine. So this is the garland that I created for this Christmas it changes every year depending on my whim really I do always start with a faux garland so you can see underneath there is a fake garland which is wired which then makes life so easy because then you can just collect lots and lots of greenery and just throw it all in and wire it round so it doesn't fall off which is super simple. I use buried ivy which you can find growing up trees which gives such a lovely colour ranges between purples and light greens. I use teasels which I've collected over the years and actually found that if you store them for a couple of years they lose the real spikiness so they're far less painful to decorate with. I use lots of fur oh what else do I use oh little fake fur cones that are sprayed gold and white which is so pretty. Faux berries I do usually put rose hips in actually as well but this year we've really struggled for rose hips I think because of the terrible weather so what else have I done ah I've popped in pops of red because that's how I'm feeling this Christmas not that you would get that impression at all. I've added some little bells and some velvet and then the beautiful velvet Morris & Co stockings which I just adore. A lovely rag wreath some little children's decorations from over the years this is virtually the only decoration that my son has ever made for me aged about three so it's very precious if a little strange. Candles again always candles as warm as possible and it just creates a really lovely cozy warm home. These gonks we bought years ago when the children were really little and they saw them in the shop and ran over to them and hugged them and I just thought we've got to have some fun I think as you get older and your children take over your lives you realise not everything has to be elegant and beautiful at Christmas you can actually inject some fun and silliness and they still hug them over the Christmas period which I love even though they're now teenagers and obviously Dottie absolutely adores them so they get pulled around by their poor little hats but they seem to have survived quite a few years so they're doing very well. This is our wonderful wicker hamper of joy that used to have all the toys in which was wonderful and now bit by bit like Toy Story the toys move out and actually it's all got the board games in now for Christmas so it's quite useful. It will be covered in articulate and scrabble and chocolates lots and lots of chocolates and mince pie crumbs and at the moment it's all beautifully styled but it doesn't last like that once the family are here on Christmas day. We tend to bring the big cushions around and we just sit around here really which is so cozy and lovely. I did originally well not originally for the past 10 years we've had our Christmas tree in this corner here so it's felt like part of the family that was actually quite squashed up and we swap the sofas around to make more room and I loved it because it just felt like it was part of the family with us but then I accidentally bought a slightly too big Christmas tree this year and we couldn't fit it in anymore because the ceiling is quite a lot lower here than it is on the other side of the room so we we moved the tree and actually I really like it like this. I think it looks sort of a bit more elegant over there rather than I normally get a very squashy fat delicious tree but actually maybe maybe I'm finally growing up I don't know but I really like it there. So last year I went full florals and threw everything I had at it, fauve, silk, real, dried hydrangeas, I just went mad and I've done that for a couple of years and I don't know what happened I think because it's a different tree a lot taller and because it's got a more elegant shape to it it sort of dictated how I decorated it I think that's probably how I decorate actually I am dictated to so this cottage was totally because it was dark and low I had to create lighter walls and floral furnishings to warm it up and it's pretty much the same with the trees they tell me how to decorate them so it's a lot more elegant and a lot more paired back I always start with our silver and gold baubles and little jingle bells and a bit of fun at Christmas and for years I just decorated with gold and silver very simple very refined and bit by bit like everything else the children have crept in and colour and joy have crept in and so then I've added some lovely copper big chunky stars and some really large white baubles ceramic baubles which I adore and then we've got the gorgeous beading which was a new edition last year actually and I really enjoyed it so I've brought that back again it's quite difficult to put up particularly when the tree isn't necessarily symmetrical but I figure nothing in this cottage is symmetrical or even everything is wonky so it just fits in I've also added these red bows I mean I know bows are really popular at the moment because they're really delicious as is the colour red so we've just gone for it my little birds I wasn't sure about these actually when I put it on but I quite like it picking out the little white baubles so they're staying for now and I you know gosh by the time Christmas day comes it'll probably be full of fake flowers again I'll have probably given in but at the moment I'm really enjoying this really simple look obviously I have to talk about the fairy because she is my pride and joy I bought her I don't even know how many years ago and I saw her in a magazine and fell completely in love with her and tracked down the maker and it's just it makes me so happy she came in a really special little box I don't know if anyone has ever read My Naughty Little Sister but when she gets Rosie doll and she's in this beautiful box and she unwraps the doll and she's so precious and that's how I feel about this fairy unwrapping the tissue paper and seeing her every Christmas just makes me so excited and she's so sparkly and so pretty so she has to go on the top of the tree there's no debating it actually a bit like the RAF where if you stay still you get painted white here if you stay still you get covered in ivy so I'm afraid that's what's happened I decorate our bookcase every year with long long garlands of ivy that I pull off all the trees so really I'm looking after the trees at the same time this is what I explain to my husband when I make such a terrible mess to all strewn across the top and then I've added fairy lights to make it a little bit more magical and a few bows have crept in I couldn't help myself just I'm feeling a bit this Christmas needs just a bit more I don't know I think it's been a dark year and I think the weather's been terrible so it's been metaphorically and physically quite dark so it feels like I just needed a bit more fun and a bit more joy so these bows have brought that I just this corner I love Christmas put a little star in the window and the candle and it's just one of those little quiet places that very often actually nephews will come and just sit on the cushions and just take some time out and chill and grab a book and that's exactly why I created this space in the first place just somewhere you can sit and have a few moments so it's really lovely when I see other people doing it as well it makes my heart really happy again I've added some more ivy over here and another garland you will see throughout the cottage so let's just call this garland number three because that keeps it quite low key doesn't it I have to decorate the piano it's just a total joy with the mullioned window the very wonky mullioned window more ivy found some rose hips that were still going I have used artificial candles here because obviously it's quite close to the timber frame so I get a bit scared so I've used that this is our Christmas carols book so every year we are lucky enough to have our group of friends over and it started when the children were really small quite a few of our friends are quite musical so my friend will come and play the piano because I just flinky plonk a few chords it's not good enough to be able to do full carols whereas she can play anything you literally go could you could you play this now play that um and we we stand around and eat mince pies and drink sherry and sing Christmas carols it sounds I know completely ridiculous but it's really good fun and when they were little the children would join in we had a suitcase of instruments and they'd pull out the tambourines and then the grown-ups would get involved and they'd start with the jingle bells as well and drumming and I think at one point the old violin came out and the clarinet and it's just a very silly very fun afternoon and there's something about singing that once you get over the initial oh this is a bit embarrassing you actually really get into it and then we always end up into sort of going into the 1980s George Michael but lots of very silly songs then come after the carols and it's just a really lovely evening um we do have a nativity set that the children well I say the children it's now my daughter because my son is far too grown up and cool to do it to do anything about decorating but we've had this for years and years and years and actually you can see poor baby Jesus he got a little bit dotted one year and in fact I think one of my daughter's friends pocketed him for a couple of weeks one Christmas but it's about those memories that actually I really treasure and I love the fact that little wind-up Rudolph has entered the scene as well I don't remember reindeer in the original but why not we'll go with it it's Christmas why not so yes this is very special and just a tiny reminder of why we celebrate Christmas so back in the days when I had taste sophistication pre-children everything was very elegant and I would use cream candles you don't use colored candles good grief and bit by bit color has entered my life even in the form of candles it's ridiculous yes I think probably my favorite color is pink and I just I discovered these gorgeous rustic pinks and I just think they're so pretty and again just bring a bit of extra warmth and color I just love tiny little pops of pink and little pops of red it just lifts the room I think when I decorate for Christmas it is very similar to how I decorate ordinarily so I will use the same color schemes the pinks and the reds and the layering and I will try and blend it with all my florals and my tints because that's what makes it feel cohesive and cozy so the pinks the flowers I will use rustic elements like the fur combs in the way that I do with the wicker hamper and the wicker table I will use wooden decorations I'll then add some sparkle so like the mercury candlesticks over there just to bring a little bit more sparkle for Christmas again we've still got the naturals and the textures but in creeps a little bit of gold and in creeps a little bit of jingle and just it's just layering on top so it still is how I decorate but it's just a little bit more fun I think probably the only decoration no-no would be tinsel for me and it's I feel really awful I and the children have it in their bedroom because they love tinsel and who doesn't love tinsel it's so sparkly and fun but it does not float my festive boat so it's yeah it's a no-no in here I think it's probably because it was so popular in the 80s my mother would throw tinsel at everything and it would be over every doorframe and mirror a bit like I have greenery she had tinsel and it is really good fun and I know I should embrace it maybe I will next year but no for me tinsel has to stay in the children's room at the moment am I a maximalist I'm definitely not a minimalist I do love color and I do love pattern and I do love mixing them maximalism to me I think of as clashing colors and clashing textures and really yeah throwing everything at a home I hope I may be smooth things a little bit at Christmas I definitely go all out but I'll make sure that if I've got red ribbons on the tree they run throughout the cottage so there'll be some in the kitchen as well and some upstairs and I will make sure that it works with what I've already got so yes probably I'm a maximalist but I don't think I'm quite brave enough to be a hundred percent maximalist Jossie has decided to join the tour she's obviously thinking it's very exciting through in the kitchen with the mince pies so now she's on board and obviously she's not allowed on the sofa this is our hallway I try and decorate it as well just so that when people come through the front door they know it's Christmas this is my ever hopeful sledge one day it will snow again and the children will joyously grab the vintage sledge and take it outside and slay down the lane but it's been about three years since it's been used so I haven't got enormous hopes but you never know maybe it will manifest snow for us this Christmas but I like to put it just a little welcoming banner just saying Merry Christmas as you come through and then a little bit of sheepskin just for a bit of extra coziness just to begin that little feeling of Christmas so let's now head into the kitchen and try and prevent Dottie from eating the mince pies come this way so this is our AGA which is the heart of the kitchen wood burner is the heart of the sitting room the AGA is the heart of our kitchen this is where you will find me for most of the winter sat in the rocking chair keeping as warm as possible because it puts out so much heat it's wonderful occasionally when I'm really cold I will just end up sort of slightly lying over it for warmth and you love it don't you Dottie this is your favorite spot to be in the winter she's quite temperamental she will occasionally just simply refuse to cook anything and we have to get the engineers out and it takes forever so I'm really hoping that does not happen this Christmas okay tame the AGA just be very good thank you very much um yeah she likes to either make sure things are raw or burnt so hopefully that will not happen it's not going to happen just don't think about it people tend to gravitate here there is something the lure and draw of the AGA it must just be the warmth but it's absolutely where we spend a lot of time and it's obviously where we cook the Christmas dinner we don't have another oven I know clever people who live in old houses that have AGA's will also have an electric oven which would make a lot of sense but we don't have that we simply rely upon her so we so we just have to hope that she works again this Christmas please yes garlanded the beam I do have another garland but this year I've done something different which is very exciting I just the pops of orange got me really excited and then I saw these little robins in Susie Watson we have a robin called Clive I've probably talked about before I can't remember um and he flies into the house he seems to think this is his home and he should be part of our family so he tends to fly into the sitting room and sit on the music stand or on the bookcase he likes to leave little messages on our cushions which is really irritating but the fact that he wants to come in I think is really gorgeous so as soon as I saw those I thought I've got to have a little ode to Clive within our garland and maybe it might encourage him to come into the kitchen where it's easier to clean than into the sitting room actually over the summer um my sister-in-law was staying and apparently a pigeon flew into the little bigger than a small robin and a dotty went absolutely wild and was trying to grab it and she said it was just mayhem I was actually really glad I was away that day so no pigeons on the garland just robins but I'm really happy with it I think it's just lovely little pops of color again we do a traditional roast at Christmas and it has to be turkey there was one year we considered doing goose and everyone revolted and was extremely angry so no it's turkey and I'm lucky enough to have a friend just down the road who breeds her own turkeys so she will be bringing us the Christmas turkey which is very exciting I'm really lucky my husband does most of the cooking on Christmas day we do a lot of preparation beforehand in fact oh gosh how many years ago is it now three years ago I'd come up with a genius idea because we always have to buy so much food for all our family and I thought we could use our camping fridge could put all the meat into the camping fridge and then we've still got room in the fridge for other things so all the meat arrived and I put it all into the fridge and my husband was really excited he was coming home he said I can't wait to see a fridge full of meat this is going to be amazing and he opened the lid and all you could smell was cooked meat because I didn't realize that the camping fridge can either be set to cold or hot so it cooked the turkey it had cooked the ham the bacon the sausages but miraculously the turkey was amazing so we risked it and we put it into the agar overnight and it was the moistest juiciest turkey we've ever had so we do now prepare the turkey in advance so thanks me for being completely idiotic with the fridge what else do we have at Christmas we've got to have sausages rolled in bacon that's just a given my niece insists upon those as do I uh bread sauce I love bread sauce and I make it to my father's recipe that was always the thing that he would make at Christmas and it's just the most oh I love it um stuffing you have to have chestnut stuffing as a child memories of Christmas are sitting in front of the fire peeling the chestnuts with our fingers hurting by the end of Christmas Eve because we peeled so many but my goodness it tastes delicious absolutely worth it um we have roast potatoes that's sort of my area of expertise I have almost nailed the perfect potato over the years again because of my father he used to spend hours listening to the archers peeling the potatoes and steaming them and creating the most delicious roast potatoes so we do have a feast I make a Christmas pudding every year I did miss stir up sundae this year but it was stir up second sundae and no one eats it no one ever eats it so I spend the rest of the year working my way through it but I don't mind because I love Christmas pudding so yet another garland but it's very refined this year ordinarily I start with the conifer and the cypress and then I add the hydrangeas and then I add the roses and then I add the dahlias but I started with this and just thought actually I really like it I just like it really simple I had to have a mercury enormous bauble hanging up there and there are some little baubles dotted around and a lot of lights but it just I don't know I just yeah I think it might be that I am finally growing up this Christmas I don't know but I'm really happy with it yeah come back to me in a week and it'll probably be filled with flowers but I love this dresser it has our beautiful little French vintage gold sherry glasses that make me very happy it stores all my china that I inherited from my mother-in-law who inherited it from her mother her mother was one of the first female pottery factory owners in Stoke-on-Trent so it's very special china actually and I love using it particularly at Christmas when I sit with my mother-in-law and we drink out of these little beautiful cups it's a really precious family moment lots of little sparkly plates candles of course my lamps and this was an entire pack of candy canes when I decorated two days ago but I think the children might have been at it I normally hang them onto the Christmas tree but um yeah four really isn't going to cut it is it so that's on the list to buy some more this island at Christmas actually gets switched around and we turn it so that it's in front of the argo so we have our workspace here which then means that we can turn that table round and add the next table along so we get a long long table to fit us all and it does mean it's a little bit crowded and we have um all our cutlery and utensils on this side and then we have all the kids art stuff on this side and if it goes the wrong way around you start pulling out drawers to be able to get to your knife oh I've got some glitter which is of course is useful but it's a tradition it's a Christmas tradition um oh our tin of mince pies which I do actually need to get out and they will make sure that Dotty doesn't get them but again there's something joyful about just a simple Christmas tin but we have it every year so it means we all know that's the Christmas pie tin I just yeah it makes me very excited oh my gosh it smells so good so I make my own mince meats um and I do possibly tend to be a bit over generous with the brandy you can really smell it it's so good maybe that's why my son likes them so much oh my goodness I hadn't thought of that he sat on the sofa earlier in the week saying I love mince pies inhaled it gone I love mince pies inhaled it gone maybe it was the brandy rather than the pastry which I pride myself on may I might need to take a look at that uh there we go there's our mince pies and I put them onto a Christmas plate because you've got to have Christmas plates again to make it a bit joyous and I love a bit of Kath Kidston at Christmas I love a bit of Kath Kidston anyway particularly at Christmas she's got such joyful designs here we go yeah dogs you have to be so careful of with mince meat particularly with everything you put in them so I'm just going to keep an eye oh look she's falling asleep on the sofa so that's all right there we go and now we're slightly guest ready I just have to show you these Christmas biscuits that my daughter spent hours making yesterday it was so sweet of her we found some treacle in the larder well we found three tins of treacle in the larder which we've been clearing out and my husband was what could we do with this treacle we thought aha gingerbread so my daughter very sweetly rolled out I mean acres of gingerbread she was there for hours and hours this is just the tip of the Christmas tree iceberg of gingerbread but I just think they're so pretty and she found this amazing new recipe for the icing that's got sort of syrups and sugars and spices and as she said it tastes like the inside of a Cadbury's cream egg it's so delicious so I think she might have discovered a whole new means of making gingerbread Christmas trees so yes I just have to show you that because I'm very proud of her she worked really hard how do you achieve English holiday decor for me it's about warmth and coziness and that probably does come back to old English houses which are really drafty and cold so a bit like the way I decorate the cottage during the year it's texture and pattern and layers and layers of blankets and rugs and candles and logs and then probably the deep reds because again that brings in real warmth and coziness so and of course greenery from the outside which again I think is such a lovely traditional look that's how people did decorate you would drag in half a tree maybe not the amount of hedgerow that I brought in but that's part of that traditional classic look I think this is our kitchen tree so yes we do have a second tree in the cottage but I just because we spend a lot of time in here as well I felt that we needed to have a tree I think initially I bought a tree that was just too small when we bought it I'm not very good at sizes or math really really terrible at math so I do tend to get every single tree wrong every single year but it all works out in the end because now we have a lovely little kitchen tree and a sitting room tree as well which isn't necessarily what my husband would have liked but he has grown to adore the fact that we have two Christmas trees and the third one outside because that was another accident as well but again you need the tree to welcome people so the more trees the better quite frankly this is our Christmas table now actually on Christmas day we flip it around so it goes lengthways and then we bring in a spare table so we have a really really long table for everyone to be able to sit at but for now it's like this because once you've got the really long table you end up sort of having to dance around slightly to get past people so we don't do that until actually Christmas day and then we get the nephews to go and lift the big table in because it's very heavy so this is just a little table for now but it will be how I will decorate on Christmas day again it's got to be reds and pinks because I love those colours and this tablecloth oh my gosh from Suzy Watson it's their new design and as soon as I saw it I just knew I had to have it in my house as quickly as possible I bought the runner as well because I thought well then it mirrors it so I put the runner in the sitting room you'll have seen that on the wicker hamper and then the big tablecloth on the table and it just my brain likes the fact I've got one in there and one in there and a Christmas tree in there and a Christmas tree in here it just makes sense to me again I filled it with greenery and foliage and these gorgeous red roses which pick out the little red on the holly of the napkin and the red candlesticks and just some more birds for Christmas because clearly I'm going with a bird thing which I hadn't even realized but that runs throughout as well well we live in the countryside so why wouldn't you I've used my lovely burly dinnerware which I just adore it's just timeless completely timeless and that green of the regal peacocks well just makes me very happy at Christmas got to have a bit of Christmas sparkle on your glasses everybody knows that that's a fact add in some glistening silver for a little bit of refined elegance and then a gorgeous Christmas jug with the robins on again lots of candles again and some sparkly mercury to make it all look sparkly joyous my candelabra that again starts well so it started with just a little bit of ivy wrapped around it very simple very rustic and I just over the past few days started adding little bits more of greenery probably by Christmas Day it'll be about there with different flowers but for now I've managed to keep it paired back I've got the hydrangeas from our garden that I dried and put into a little garland oh that's a garland well that was an unintentional garland so it doesn't count uh which actually I really love over the window so I've kept it there and just adds a little extra color but again sort of ties in the red and the pink and the purple which we have here in um this is Jamie's great aunt Muriel Pemberton she was quite a famous artist and we're lucky enough to have quite a few of her paintings so the colors work really well with that and that that makes me happy color makes me really happy um I've added yeah some more ivy and some berries onto the paintings and then some more faux flowers and holly and I need to get a proper holly bush I have this amazing holly bush but it doesn't have the spikes on it which makes it great for actually flower arranging but I feel like I need the proper proper holly um that's a project for another while my husband will be really happy about that for another day um more holly and berries and then my little heart garland which I just love that comes out every year I think there's something about bringing out the same decorations every Christmas that is so reassuring and you instantly associate it with it's going to be really good fun this year we're going to have a wonderful time it's not just children that need that reassurance and reoccurrence I think grown-ups need it too actually our beloved kitchen sofa since I was little I have wanted a sofa in the kitchen because it's where I spend most of my time really um so to be able to pop something on the agar and then come and have a quick snuggle with Dottie on the sofa is just one of my favorite things to do um we had to add a little dog mattress to it because for some reason she gets incredibly muddy and I can't think why she is a mud magnet um but that really helps with I picked this up from I think it was ebay there was a woman selling it in a cottage a couple of miles from here and she'd had it in her music room and never used it so it was immaculate Laura Ashley never been used it was one of those purchases that you know when you just think oh my gosh how has this happened how have I found it I'm so excited and again it's this delicious red color that makes me really happy and adds a warmth and a coziness because these beams well you can't really see that but there it's the wind comes through them you know people's hair will be blowing as they're sitting at the table and the wind's blowing through the beams so trying to add as much color to pick up the warmth is really quite valuable in a room like this so this also gets through an awful lot of work at Christmas and my sister-in-law and mother-in-law are incredible at washing up they're so good they just seem to be constantly here going just that's done that's done and you look around and go oh wow everything's clear again we're so lucky I added a few extra little red roses and a Christmas tea towel and oh our poor peace I bought this last Christmas and it's done really well and then I read this amazing tip about tea bags and using old tea obviously without the milk in and it perks them up so I've tried that and these guys have gone yay woohoo but these aren't looking very happy oh dear right well I will sort that out in the new year but yes this is our little workstation again this was another purchase from eBay I think yeah so lucky I just I love unfitted units I think particularly in an old cottage if you try and put in a modern kitchen I think it looks really strange so I wanted to try and honor the age of the cottage and and that's sort of how it would been except that I get to have a dishwasher and a washing machine hidden under the curtains and hot water running from the sink and actually an agar rather than open fire so a little bit luckier than they were 400 years ago oh look these are from my best friend Rachel she makes these candles you buy the set you get this beautiful little pottery and then she makes refillable wax so you just pour in the next candle and you're not constantly using little pots and I meant to fill these and put them beautifully over there but that hasn't happened so just enjoy a very empty but very beautiful ceramic candle holder when people first walk into our home at Christmas I want them to be excited obviously I want them to feel welcome and at home immediately but I really want that sense of excitement that frisson of it's something different in the year because that's what Christmas is it's a moment of sheer joy so I want people to walk in and see sparkly things and see warmth and think oh we're going to have a good time this is going to be a really wonderful party if we've got friends coming over or a few days if we've got family staying I want joy and fun and coziness let's head upstairs and I'll show you how I've decorated upstairs with just a couple more garlands this is another garland that I managed to find a space for I'm always incredibly envious of people that have these beautiful banisters on their staircases where they wind the garlands around and I don't have one apart from this one I might have to garland that in a minute but I did manage to find a beam that I could do a long garland along up the staircase so that made me really excited but that is now on my list for later I've then followed it through with a couple more garlands across the windows again really simple really plain with some little pretty willow hearts to match in with the willow and wicker downstairs and this fabulous willow heart wreath that I have had for years and years and years and has come with me from house to house and it just seems really happy and really at home here which is exactly actually how I feel too and so with the creaking floorboards let's head through to our bedroom and I can show you how I've decorated that there you go it's so creaky so this is our very wonky wobbly bedroom where the floors do that so it's a bit like being on the high seas which is why everything is propped up on books you will see this is my poor husband's chest of drawers that I have slightly taken over with my own things and the tiniest of Christmas garlands it barely doesn't even count just a teeny teeny little bit of Christmas and then of course some fairy lights but a smattering of ivy just very gentle barely even there just a little nod to Christmas I went a little bit wilder here I think I don't know there's something about the cottage because we're surrounded by woodland and by fields it just lends itself to adding some extra ivy as if it's almost crept into the cottage over the winter I know it's ridiculous but I can't help it and I sort of think it's our bedroom so no one else is going to see it so it doesn't matter if I go a bit crazy with ivy and then I've added some fairy lights and some pussy willow just to add a little bit of extra white and velvety loveliness and then I had to do a little bit of chandeliery glassiness just to match in with our light fittings which were the only light fittings we could find because the ceiling is so low it had to be really close up to the ceiling but actually I really love it and sort of dictated how the room came about actually because and then when we think oh it's quite French these are vintage French chandeliers so then I ended up going for a French cane bed and kept this room really I mean it doesn't quite look as simplistic now that I've added all the ivy to it but really simple because it's a bedroom so it should be really calming and relaxing to be in I actually took the hops garland down from over the fireplace in the sitting room so that's where it's been since September and then I thought I need a Christmas garland in the sitting room because otherwise you need to know that it's Christmas and if it's just the same one how do you feel that difference so very carefully lifted the hops garland down brought it upstairs and now it feels magical and special in here and we feel very Christmassy and the garland downstairs in a much darker richer green feels much more Christmassy downstairs so it's a win-win really I was too scared to try and put fairy lights into the hops because they're quite dry now and I just had this image of every single one just falling off onto the bed so yeah I've left that but the lamps and the candles give enough light velvet a lot of velvet on the bed which is so important in the winter coziness practicality and beauty it just gives that lovely feeling of luxury and comfort and joy and of course it had to be green and red because it's Christmas yeah I have kept it as simple I mean there's a little bit of ivy over that painting but it's really simple tiny bits of ivy over this painting and this mirror some fresh flowers and then the old man's beard that I actually foraged from a hedgerow and then I've added some little fairy lights to that all throughout the year I've been thinking about the little beautiful bits of white fluff and oh if you added some white lights of that that could look really magical and I was hoping to forage actually to get some more but again this year has been so terrible there was barely any in the hedgerows so we've kept to this I didn't want to deprive the poor little birds of their seeds and then just added some little bit of sparkle and a little bit of silver and some lights and I don't normally like white lights but I don't know there's something ethereal about it I thought it worked really well but other than that it's just a very simple virtually undecorated bedroom as I mentioned the floor is really wobbly and it does curve down like that so we have to have the bed on books when we first moved in the first night this is why why are our feet so low down this was really weird and then my husband came up with a genius solution of just sticking a couple of books under the bed to lift it up so a lot of people will ask me why on earth have you got books underneath the bed but it's not for nighttime reading it's so that we're level in our beds at night really simple what most people take for granted these are little things that you have to adjust to in a wonky old cottage I love Christmas I used to not really enjoy it very much but my husband loves Christmas and he has taught me to really embrace it the children love Christmas it's time that we stop everybody stops and it's quiet outside because no one's farming it's just a really peaceful moment of the year when we're all together and we have all the family come and stay my nieces and nephews are all terribly grown up now and we eat an enormous amount of food there's an awful lot of cooking and cleaning and clearing that we all do and then we play board games which sounds really bad but we love it we all get thoroughly competitive and the boys always win at articulate which is really frustrating this year is going to be the year that the girl's going to win I'm going to revise beforehand I've decided it's just great fun with a lot of walks and the dog gets petted by everybody so Dottie thinks it's brilliant we are outside as much as we can be when it's not raining and horrible and then we come inside and we light the fire we drink mulled wine and play ridiculous games and that for me is just true happiness thank you so much for coming to visit how are they I have loved to show you our Christmas cottage it's made me all happy and excited all over again I've got to show you my neck crease thank you very much for coming back and I am going to go and just garland this staircase now I've discovered another bad stuff we're exciting uh so happy Christmas thank you very much thanks for watching go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content and shopping guides