Christmas at bijou kaleidoscope

Thought I'd show you a few snippets around the home with its modest Christmas decor.

Christmas Tree

Okay this is going to sound quite pitiful... but stay with me...

Since young, we have celebrated Christmas every year. Church, presents, food, caroling... the whole thing.

But this will be the first year I will enjoy a real Christmas tree at my home!! It's lovely having the smell of pine in the living room. It's even lovely vacuuming up the pine needles on the carpet.

I thought of decorating the tree very simply... while it looks great, I sometimes shy away from too busy Christmas trees. Gets a bit overwhelming. I thought of just white ornaments. Can you believe, I get to start collecting Christmas tree ornaments??!!!



Yeah... we got a tree with a crooked top.

I'll need to get an ornaments organiser... how do you organise/store your delicate ornaments?

Christmas Cards

I was inspired to make a move on finally realising one of the things that I've always wanted to do... a spot of luxury cards and stamping. So I thought I'd do it this Christmas. I normally make my own tags/cards but this time, wanted something more elegant and luxurious. I love Crane & Co papers and found some for a good price... and got all stampy-like.



Presents

Zero-budgets for wrapping the few family Christmas gifts we have has made me look around my home for wrapping supplies.
Inspired by an image that has been stash away at the back of my mind:



And I've just found that Martha Stewart has a Christmas version from Dec 2004 issue:

Via Martha Stewart

I grabbed me some of my oh-so-luxe plain brown packaging paper and some oh-so-even-luxe dollar paper doilies (we don't seem to have the array of doilies you guys seem to get in the USA!):



Not as swish as some other pretty packaging but to spend $0 on packaging, I think I did pretty well!