Live it: Sammy's Christmas Tree 2013

I can't help it, I am a Christmas person, any excuse to put a truck load of sparkly stuff in my home!

I always love posting pictures of my tree, to me it means it's officially Christmas in the Claridge household. 

This year my theme is black, white and gold, I have my white tree from last year, but I limited my colour pallet, re-used a lot of decorations from my collection and added a few new home-made ones too. I made theses sparkly diamonds out of 5 gold pipe cleaners at 10p each, cheap and cheerful. 

I bought some rustic wooden hearts from Hobbycraft and painted them white with a different black pattern on each one, they make a great addition to the tree, and a bargain at around £1.75 each (including ribbon and paint)

The only ornaments I splashed out on this year was these little ceramic owls, they were £3 each from our local Shaw Trust charity shop, so they made me feel good as the money was for charity and how cute are they! The stars are another home-made addition to the tree, I used air drying clay and a cookie cutter. Then painted them white, with gold liquid leaf paint on the edges.

I am so happy with how my tree turned out this year, I love the way it glows in our lounge and I can't wait to put all our family and friends gifts under it on Christmas eve. Here is a quick look at some of the other decorations I have put up too. We have some paper snowflakes in the kitchen, as well as glitter stars over the mirror with a tinsel bauble garland. I made some extra clay stars and strung them up to make a garland over the doors in our lounge, I used some letter stamps to emboss 'wish upon a star' onto the middle, this may be my favourite decoration, I think I may make it a permanent feature.

This Christmas is going to be different for us this year as it will be the first one without my Grandpa who passed away in March. He was such a huge part of our celebrations and we will miss him loads, but I know he will be with us in our memories. He wouldn't have wanted us to be sad and miss him, so we are scheduling lots of games and movies to keep us entertained. In honour of G'pa there may even be some very bad carol singing. 

I hope you enjoyed that little peek at our decorations for this year, I would love to hear about your decorations, If you have posted any pictures, pop a link in the comments so we can head over and take a look. 

Have a magical, festive weekend

Sammy xxx

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Keep up with our Christmas antics on our instagrams... Sammy's and H's.

Love it. Black and Gold

I have been obsessing on anything black and gold lately! In the spring it was neon pink and gold and as the dark nights have drawn in and my mind has turned to all things Christmas, black has found its way in to the scheme. I have been checking out Etsy.com for some gift ideas and have put together a little treasury of my fave black and gold items.

Doesn't it all look so luxurious and glam! I am going black white and gold with my Christmas tree this year, you know how I love a theme. You can see my last few trees here and last years one here.

You can check out this collection and purchase these items on my  Etsy.com Treasury.

How are you all getting on with Christmas gift shopping? Are you making any gifts this year? 

Have a lovely weekend

Sammy xxx