Collecting Firewood

So lucky to live by the sea, my favourite winter Sunday is to go and collect driftwood then come home and make a fire. In front of the fire we drink tea and eat cakes, read papers and magazines then later wrap some Christmas presents. I spend ages playing with ribbons and sparkly bits to get inspired. And so the cosy countdown begins...

This year I bought lots of my goodies from Folksy. These bits are from Vintage Dreams and to my delight arrived in a pretty red parcel!

I also got lots of my paper and ribbons from Folly and Glee. The mixture of different jewel colours and patterns of paper and ribbon look so pretty all stacked up together or hanging from a driftwood tree as you can see on their site.

Christmas Sparkles

The following weekend we collected our Christmas tree and went to look for pretty new decorations. I love the Trelawny Garden Centre which becomes a little grotto of shininess and beautiful festive colours.

Happy Snow Days

I know that it is no longer popular to admit to this but I just adore the snow. For me, it means that time stands still just for a while and we are forced to become playful instead. I love the quietness of the roads, the way that you can walk anywhere and everywhere and it all just is part of the same pretty white. People stop and talk to each other and look after each other. Even though my parcels got held up, did it really matter? I thought we all dreamt of white Christmas's so if so, what better present than this?

Following a cosy night of music at the wonderful Thatch in Croyde we stopped in Braunton for breakfast and last minute festive treats. I adore the shop Kittiwakes - especially loving the seasonal shopping bags- and also Caen Antiques where I was overcome with excitement at the pretty little plates for 50p. These were put to good use for Christmas Eve nibbles whilst finishing off my wrapping. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Day Giggles

Romany Caravan

The Under the thatch website is absolutely my favourite place to start a search for a new adventure. We travelled down to Cornwall for a beautifully cold few days at the end of October. The time and place felt magical with plenty of warm things to keep us cosy. A perfect sunrise across frosty grass, welcoming light through the open door of the caravan, collecting wood for our burner and cinnamon hot chocolate...

 The carvan is perfectly located past a standing stone and down a bumpy track and overlooks Bodmin moor. It took a little finding but was so worth it. We felt perfectly hidden away in our own little day dream.

 
On the second day we did venture out (or in?) to escape the rain. We went to Eden, one of our favourite places for more autumnal celebration.

I really loved these little boxes with their ingredients for preserving childhood: feathers, sand, fresh air, mud, bugs, seeds, fresh cut grass and imagination. It suited our little adventure perfectly and we hoped that we had been well preserved! What ingredients would you add?

Day three began with a crisp low autumnal sun so we decided to go to the seaside! In Padstow our mouths watered in Rick Stein's deli and we giggled at some of the prices now that we were living such a beautifully simple life. We had tea and cakes in the lovely Pescadou then returned home for our Bonfire feast .

I think Autumn is my favourite of all seasons.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
George Eliot