Hillfoot House

Another post at long last.  We have had so many things going on in the house that there have been very few chances to take photos of the rooms while they are not cluttered up with furniture from another room.  And as the last workman packed his toolbox into his van and drove off, it was time to get the Christmas decorations out: so for the moment I still haven’t got photos of finished rooms (the spare bedroom looks AMAZING) but what I do have is photos of how we’ve decorated for Christmas.

Christmas tree in dining room on Christmas Day

The last seventeen Christmasses have been in the same house in Tilehurst and we had a rhythm to knowing how to arrange furniture, how best to display cards, and where to put the tree. It was such fun to start all of those thought processes from new.  We argued for ages about where the tree should go, and finally agreed that we could now have not one but two trees: and in the end we decided that one would go upstairs in the hallway, so that its lights would twinkle out from the central window of the house, and one would be in the dining room.  That seems to have worked very nicely.  So we drove off in two cars and bought the trees, tape measure tucked cautiously into my pocket.  This tree is just over 8 foot high – actually, nearly 9 foot…  You can see that the table is part laid already for Christmas dinner here.  We rented a round table from Carters the marquee hire people, as we were having ten for dinner.  Our dining table only squeezes eight on, and is on the List for Replacing: this was a lovely way to test out a round table in there!

Tinselled shelves with cards and felt robin

Again, we debated about the cards.  We thought about hanging them on strings in big loops across walls; or on ribbons or other mechanisms to hang in long drops down the walls – and suddenly it was so obvious.  So we cleared away all of the year round ornaments and items from the curved shelving in the drawing room, added some tinsel and some more decorations (I do love the massive felt robin) and put the cards up on the shelves.  The photo of both of the shelves doesn’t look as Christmassy as it feels when you’re in the room: in daylight it seems to drain some of the glow from the tinsel.

 

How the shelves look in the drawing room

We have never before decorated outside the house, and the girls were very keen to do so.  Out in the countryside you can see the lights much more clearly and there is something enormously comforting about them drawing you in: in the middle of town, frankly, the lights are easily drowned out by the general street lighting and overall glow of the town.  We wandered around DIY stores, reading the instructions carefully about how many metres of lighting we were buying, and how far the lead stretched before the lights start; we thought we were selecting some lights that were going to loop round the entire garden six times but of course they struggled to make it as far as the gate!  We ended up buying three sets of lights, and of course they are all different colours (who knew the difference between Warm Glow and Cream before?!) and we managed to get them all on different twinkle settings.  But it was a good start and we are much inspired for next year.  Best of all, we invested in a light up reindeer which makes me grin every time I see it!

I have tried to take photos of the lights from outside but my camera isn’t very good for taking outdoor shots.  This one is the best although the flash from the camera has lit up far too much of the background.  On the other hand, if you look closely you will see Rose who came out to inspect me taking photos.

The least decorated room is the sitting room but on the other hand it is finally finished and was looking tidy today so I have taken a photo.  The ceiling light has been fitted and the coffee table is in place; the only thing left to do now is to try to get some sockets onto the wall behind the sofa (on the left, facing the windows) so that the table lamps can be lit there too.  The most important items of furniture are of course the radiator beds.  We bought one for Rose, knowing she would love it, and were proved right: but Charlie was a bit put out and so we bought one for him too.  In the evenings the two of them occupy those beds, like an old married couple.  Cleo and Merlot still find their own spots to sit in, though Merlot often joins us and sits on the sofa.  Something, incidentally, about the flash has cast patterns on the far wall but it is simply plain.

Twin radiator beds for the cats

We will take the decorations down at the weekend and at the moment we have no immediate plans for decorating or floor sanding etc (though some are in development and we’ll be setting dates soon) so once the post decoration spring-clean has happened, I’ll be able to update more thoroughly.  Promise!  Happy New Year: we are all looking forward to 2013 very much.