Vintage Christmas party part 5

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers and to part 5 of Vintage Christmas Monday!

I showed you a lot of my inside decorations & crafts for Christmas in my last 4 posts, but today I want to share with you my little garden. Just in time for Christmas we got snow and Riley, our tom cat is wondering about what's all that white stuff, he never saw it before.

It started snowing a little on Thursday and on Friday afternoon when I came home from work my garden was covered in just a sugery coat. I like that my little crabapple tree looks like it is decorated with red ornaments with the few remaining little apples.

Just some photos from around the patio and garden:

Doesn't the burlap bag looks as if Santa has forgotten it there? In reality there is a pot with perrenials in the bag to protect them from the frost.

A glass cloche on one of my garden tables:

I had to take a photo of Riley too watching me taking photos outside with this surprised little face lol

Then later on Friday evening we got more and more snow:

And this is what my little garden looked like on Saturday morning after a freezing cold night with minus 13 degrees celsius brrrrrr I took this photo from the roof top window in my studio:

It's freezing outside but it is so cozy inside the cottage and I love the view through the living room window and this gives me a really vintage Christmas feeling like in the old Christmas movies that I like to watch at this time of the year.

Almost all the peanuts and seeds and apples that I put out on my patio table for the birdies are covered under a white blanket of sparkling snow now.

But they still have the feeder to find something to eat. My garden princess is now wearing a snow crown.

I tried to take some photos last night when it had snowed even more, but they are all a bit blurry :

Well blurry or not I think you can still see how cosy it looks with the big red lantern lit and all the candle light inside of the cottage.

These last two pictures are from my kitchen window, taken from outside and inside

with the window wreath and all my little metall cottages lit by candles:

Please visit also Joan our VCM hostess here http://thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com/

and all the the other participants listed in her blogs side bar!

 

I 'd be happy if you liked the little tour around my snowy home and with only 3 days left until Christmas (we celebrate on the 24th here in Germany) I'll take this opportunity to wish you all where ever you are in the world a very Merry and Peaceful Christmas!

See you again soon I hope!

xoxo Carola *~*~*~*~*~*

Vintage Christmas Monday part 4

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends and readers and of course all party guests to the Vintage Christmas Party part 4, as always hosted by Joan over @ http://thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com/

Yesterday was the third of Avent and I took some photos around my Christmassy decorated home. The photo above is my Advent wreath he he well it is an iron basket stand to say the truth, but decorated with red wooden apples a vintage glass Pomegranate and other baubles as well as 4 vintage candle clips it became my Advent wreath. Candles were lit everywhere in the cottage yesterday afternoon and it was very cosy (click on pictures to enlarge them for more details):

I love to hang glass baubles and ornaments on all my chandeliers. I have 3 hanging chandeliers in my living room

I also did some vintage inspired Christmas crafts yesterday morning, but before I show you mine I have to show you one of my favorite ornaments of the season, hand crafted by my talented friend Madai from Wren Cottage is this enchanting glitter cone, isn't it just too cute?

I also played with glitter yesterday. I created two vintage inspired angels and two spool ornaments, made from vintage wooden thread spools as well as a large glitter snowman box.

I decorated them on and in front of an antique string instrument I recently found in my mum' s basement and she gave it to me :) She simply has no space for it so she thought it would be better to give it a new home at Boxwood Cottage.

I found the instructions for the glitter snowman box in the latest Martha Stewart Living magazine, which I got kindly sent by my flickr friend Kathy od Readthreadart. Seeing that I had all the necessary supplies handy of course I had to make my own glitter snow man box. The head and the middle ball are styrofoam balls, but the last and biggest snow man ball is a papier mâché ball (Kugel) that opens so that you can fill it with a little gift or candies. You can get these papier mâché balls over at my little shop blog www.Boxwoodcottageshop.blogspot.com btw for sale now, for just 1Euro/1 Dollar the piece! Email me to Carolinchen39athotmaildotcom if you are interested. You can find the instructions to make your own sparkling snow man treat box also on Martha's website here: http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/easy-holiday-crafts

I made the Victorian angels with German angel scraps, German crêpe paper, some tinsel and German glass glitter (click picture to enlarge for mor details). For the other ornaments I used old wooden thread spools and embellished them with tinsel, German Dresden foil borders and other little embellishements that I found in my studio. I found the idea for the spool ornaments on Beth's Patina White blog btw and had to adopt it instantly, because I find it so great!

Close up of my first two vintage wooden thread spool ornaments, I'll sure make more of these, so fun!

I just had to show you this poster on which you found lot's of gorgeous vintage Christmas ornaments, isn't it pretty?

Lastly two photos which proof that cat's love Christmas decorations too! Do you spot our tabby tomcat Riley in the shot below?

He has made himself comfortable on the cat sctatch tree which I decorated for him with a fir tree garland. He loves it so much, he thinks he has his own real tree in the house now he he I took these photos yesterday afternnoon when the cottage was lit by candle light.

That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed your stay on my Vintage Christmas Monday party.

Like every week you can find lot's more Vintage Christmas Party posts in the side bar of our VCM hostess Joan's blog over at www.thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com

Have a a fabulous week everyone and enjoy the cosy season! We have strong frost now here in Germany which is forecasted to stay until after Christmas wohoo so I cross my fingers for getting a little snow and a White Christmas this year!

xoxo Carola

Vintage Christmas Monday part 3

Welcome to the second Vintage Christmas Monday

where again I join Joan from anythinggoeshere @ http://thepottingshed-anythinggoeshere.blogspot.com/in her Vintage Christmas Party. As promised last week ,I was at my parents home yesterday to take pictures of my mum's vintage Christmas decorations. Just click on the pictures to enlarge them and see more details:

My mum collects vintage dolls and old porcelain and dishes as well as almost all beautiful old household  items that you can imagine for several decades and she loves to decorate her home with old vintage items from the late 1800s to the early 1900s mixed with beautiful new vintage inspired items. Unfortunately the light wasn't very good on Sunday so that some pictures are a bit blurry and others taken with flash look a bit cold, but my Olympus C760 camera gave it's very best for you. Below you can see part of her collection of antique iron Christmas tree holders:

This is a pretty white cupboard in the guest bathroom also decorated with a vintage inspired Christmas angel:

Mum's antique dolls got dressed up in their most delicate vintage lace outfits for the holiday season:

In the following photo is my parent's antique sideboard filled to the brim with vintage china and decorated for Christmas:

You'll find vintage inspired wooden angels from the Erzgebirge (Oremountain) Deutsche Volkskunst (German Folkart) at many different places in my parents home at this time of the year because my mum is an avid collecter of these little precious figures.

This for example is her grand angel orchestra:

A very old window decorated in the window shelf of one of the living room windows:

Beautiful raspberry red glass baubles in a vintage inspired wooden box:

A seasonal decorated chandelier in front of a vintage mirror:

Another chandelier decorated with new and old glass baubles:

This is one of  mum's greatest Christmas treasures, a vintage silver basket filled with very old glass Christmas ornaments, which she inherited from a very good friend that unfortunately has already died:

Close up of another silver basket with vintage glass Christmas ornaments:

That's it from my mum's home for today I hope you enjoyed seeing some of her Christmas decorations.

The next picture is taken at my home because yesterday was Nikolaus Day here in Germany. Saint Nicholas comes late at night and fills the booties of the children with sweets so they find them when they awake in the morning of Nikolaus Day. Then in the afternoon the kids walk around their neighborhood, go from door to door and say a little Christmas poem and get some candies as reward. It's a bit like your Halloween tradition just without any mean tricks.

I painted and decorated vintage inspired papier mâché Santa boots for my niece and nephew and filled them with sweets, but shhhh don't tell them it wasn't Saint Nicholas ;-)

The last picture is a sneak peek of the friendship swap parcel I made for my friend Madai from Wren Cottage in SC USA. It's finally on it's way to you sweetie! Hope you'll get it when you come back from your business trip!

Now I look forward to visit all the participants of Vintage Christmas Monday to see their treasures.

Hope to see you again next Monday for part 3 of Vintage Christmas Monday

xoxo Carola