home made centre piece for your christmas table

If there's a moment in the year when you can be a little more daring with your flowers on the table it has to be the holidays.

This is the moment when I like to use flowers plus .... other things.  A lot of you have told me that you are decorating with white, silver and fresh green this year, so I tried to put together an idea that may fit in, using materials that most of us have in the home already  or that are inexpensive to buy.

 To make these centrepieces, I used two urns I already had, some florists foam (either already ball shape or cut into a ball from a new brick);  wooden barbecue skewers;  a bunch of cuttings from a box hedge; a bunch of small white roses, some small Christmas baubles and a bag of  ... brussel sprouts!

Start by soaking the balls of foam in water, the wetter they are the longer your arrangement will last.  Actually you can increase the lifespan by putting these out into a cool garage each night.  Stand a straight branch in each recipient or urn, and make sure they are firm using stones, foam, even plaster if you wish.

Push each ball down onto the stick to create the hole, then take them off again to start building up the arrangement.

After you have put small lengths of box all over the ball, prepare the brussel sprouts.  I use these because I love their colour, their small tidy shape and because they last for a long time, even if the roses need changing.    Peel off any discoloured leaves, then push a short length of skewer into the base of each, position on the ball of foam.

Start building up the ball, using the sprouts, roses and baubles, with some more box if required, until the foam is completely covered and you have a nice round shape.   Push the ball back onto the 'trunk' and check the shape, then cover the base with some beautiful green moss.  Voila!


The same idea works just as well with red roses and tiny apples or lichi.  Pine cones are good too, but can be more difficult to fix to the foam.

While I was already making a mess I also popped a few white hellebore with some baby ivy into an old soup tureen and surrounded it with moss.  Doesn't look spectacular for the moment but it will grow during the holidays.

Hope you enjoyed that, I'll be back tomorrow with something else!

me and a tin of black paint

Black in small doses  seems to work well at the moment.  It compliments the neutrals we love so much, and tolerates the occasional loud splash of a brighter colour.

I've had fun restoring an old and very battered backgammon board found for next to nothing at a fair, and then since I had some paint left over, I tried it on a cutlery box.  What do you think?

 the box when I started - not a pretty sight!

- I replaced the main panels and painted them ... black -

- I toyed with the idea of leaving the board without any markings -

- I tried to call it stylish; my son  called me lazy -

so we compromised and I painted in the simplest board possible!

 then I moved onto a cutlery box ...

I can't sign off without thanking you for all your kind words about my pictures

this weekend - you really know how to make a girl happy!!

Thank you for reading my blog, thank you for your generosity!

garden favours

The first show of annuals is fading away in the garden, leaving behind their seed pods and making space for the next wave.

This is a good time to make some very personal favours, gifts to special friends, thank-you's to a dinner hostess.  I've found an idea that seems to please, costs nothing and takes less time than required to write this post !!

 To make these little packets of home grown seeds, you'll need some greaseproof or waxed paper, a sewing machine, paints and ......  some seeds.  Here I chose seeds from a pink lupin.

To create a tiny and very simple watercolour, don't get ambitious, keep it simple, naive even.  You're not looking for a botanical print - unless you're clever enough to do that, then just go for it !! - For the lupins, I first painted in some rough lines showing the position of the lupin heads and some foliage beneath.

Next I dotted in some of the lupin colour, blotting with kitchen paper as I went to keep everything soft.

I painted in the name of the flower, again as simply as possible

To make the seed sachet, I simply folded a piece of waxed paper in half and machine sewed each of the long upright sides, making a sachet open at the top.

I popped the seeds into the sachet, you don't need very many, and sewed the little painted paper onto the top of the sachet to seal the seeds inside.  Voila !  I told you, it was quicker than this post to finish !

Oh yes, and just for fun I added the words 'de mon jardin'  -  from my garden.

Any flowers will do for this,  providing they are easy to draw - Nigella is good because they are so vague and fluffy!  Have fun!

Paint Project Inspiration

Remember this post about stenciling roller shades? I thought about when I came across this picture on Country Living...I was looking for this project. Still don't know if I will attempt this...
I would definitely try the shade project but I am not sure about the roller with the stencil. What do you think? Would you try it?