Alison May

The Festive House

The Seasonal House series

Copyright © Alison May, 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmastime.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Contents

1. The Festive House

2. Welcome To The Festive House

3. MAKING PREPARATIONS

4. MAKING MEMORIES

5. PUTTERY TREATS

6. DECORATIVE TOUCHES FOR FESTIVE JOY

7. FESTIVE HOUSEHOLD RECIPES

8. FESTIVE JOURNALLING PROMPTS

9. FESTIVE READING LIST

10. THE FESTIVE HOUSE

The Festive House

Ah the bliss of the Festive season: a special time stuffed like a Christmas stocking with joy and gratitude…

E
gg-nog and slipper socks. Tiny Kings and little Shepherds. Mince pies and brandy cream. Bowls of tangerines and white hyacinths forced in stone-filled jars.

Mulled wine and stocking on the mantle-piece. Twinkly baubles, Christmas lists and letters to Santa. Big dreams and little ones. Real trees and gorgeous artificial ones strung with decorations that speak of days gone by.

An imaginary place at the table set for those we have lost, the jingle of an angel getting her wings and babies first Christmas hanging on the tree. Glorious turkey, stuffing, and pigs in bacon blankets. Nat King Cole and the Queens Speech.

Sellotape, scissors and candy twine wrapped brown paper parcels, paper chains and pom-poms. Bowls full of Christmas cards. New pajamas and naughty elves. Hampers packed with gourmet nibbles, sideboards groaning with sweets, nuts and candy canes. Kisses stolen under the mistletoe.

Deep red amaryllis, a poinsettia, and a teacup full of snowdrops. Baubles everywhere. A bottle of stout for Santa and a carrot to be nibbled before we go to sleep on Christmas Eve.

Ready for the most joyful of all Christmases?

Welcome To The Festive House

T
he Festive House is the fifth in my lovely Seasonal House series and takes the same format as those that have gone before but sprinkles it in all manner of glitter and twinkly fairy lights so that together we can layer our homes in Christmas, the BrocanteHome way.

Not designed to be a comprehensive guide to Christmas, The Festive House is a teeny book, created to help you capture the essence of the season without feeling overwhelmed and above all else to remind you just how magical our festivities at home can be when we have taken the time to create a Christmas less ordinary…

Enjoy won’t you?

Love Alison.x

MAKING PREPARATIONS

At Christmas time it truly pays to be as organised as possible, if only to keep us on the ride of sanity as the season draws closer. And so begin your Festive House journey by making as many preparations as you can, so that as each busy day draws to a close, you can sip an egg-nog and know that like Mrs.Christmas, you are the one the festivities can depend upon.

*Choose a tiny little hardback notebook to live in your handbook with all the Christmas lists you need to refer to when you are out shopping.

*Pick a secret drawer to fill up with tiny treats just for you. This m’dear is your seasonal survival kit.

*Set up a wrapping station that is as permanent as possible in the run up to Christmas so you don’t have to keep hunting for scissors and sellotape.

*Treat yourself to seasonally scented dish soap and hand wash and lotion.

*Buy an amber or cobalt blue essential oil bottle and mix up your very own Christmas blend.

*Take yourself to the library and gather as many festive themed books as you can find.

*Print out a one page December calendar and fill it with all your invitations and obligations, making sure there is enough time to simply enjoy the season between parties and pantomimes.

*Stock up on loo rolls, tea bags, bread and milk to freeze. Make sure you have the basics in stock so you won’t be stranded by a White Christmas.

*Write your very own letter to Santa (and share it with your partner who might just be grateful for a few festive pointers).

*Spend an evening snuggled up with a blanket reading all the Christmas magazines you can get your hands on and thoroughly drown yourself in all things festive.

MAKING MEMORIES

“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ”
― Norman Vincent Peale

D
ecember, December, December aren’t you just a hessian sack full of mixed blessings?

At once the culmination and celebration of another year gone and a festival of consumerism that strikes those with enough seasonal spirit left in their hearts as the polar opposite of what Christmas is supposed to mean.

Emotions run high and exhaustion becomes a close companion as we try to create the Christmas of our family’s dreams. The Christmas of commercials and storybooks and a season expected to be full of love and joy in even the most trying eras of our lives.

But we would not be without it: this twinkly, precious full- stop to our year. No, we would not give it up for a bag full of gold dust because in Christmas we are forced to climb down from our very own gravy trains and sit right there in the bosom of our closest family and friends. Celebrating all that we feel Christmas represents, observing wonder in our children’s faces and setting aside our differences if only for a day or two.

Christmas is special and if we do it with a mindful heart and a planner full of inspiration even its preparation can be joyful…

At home then the days of advent days start with the jingle of the little bells we keep in our dressing gown pocket. The tinkle of good cheer to rouse sleepy heads from too cozy pillows.

We wander downstairs to rooms warmed by radiators programmed to wake us gently and switch on fairy lights wrapped through twigs and strung around the kitchen as we go.

With a Christmas playlist ready to re-light the joy of festive seasons gone by, we dance a little polka in a festive apron as we lay the table for a breakfast fit for kings: tiny pancakes shaped like Christmas trees, marshmallow-topped porridge, and crystal wine glasses filled with blood orange juice. All the little somethings that elevate the ordinary and remind those we love that the days of December aren’t like those of the rest of the year. They are meant to be sprinkled with frivolity and joy. They are meant to make us giggle and above all else feel indulged!

When the rabble have departed for school and work, we sit down for ten minutes with a cup of calming white tea before dedicating an hour to frenzied cleaning: for this we know for sure we cannot (nay! must not
) layer loveliness on to grime and chaos. No Siree! So an hour truly dedicated to creating household peace is more than necessary if we plan to indulge our urge to sprinkle our homes with so much glitter Santa would struggle to miss us from the sky…

When blankets have been folded and pillows puffed, dishes washed and a pan full of Christmas set about simmering on the stove, we can take a moment to choose which decoration we are next going to bless the house with - for this is our very own advent of sorts: starting with the wreath we hang on the front door on the 1st of December and culminating in adding Baby Jesus to our Nativity on Christmas Morning, so that Christmas arrives slowly but surely, building momentum with the dressing of the tree seven days before Christmas and delighting little ones as the house gets more festive by the day while spotting new decorations in each and every room in the house becomes a happy game.

For Christmas needs to be everywhere: not just in our living room, but on our bedside table and in the tiny powder room tucked under the stairs. On the doorstep and in the laundry room and even if the only nod to the season in the smallest of rooms is a single bauble looped over each doorknob we can spritz a little Christmas into the air daily so that the tickle of tangerines and pine trees is never far away.

Elevenses have to be a frangipane topped mince pie warmed and served with a spoonful of cream, five minutes stolen just for ourselves while we flick through our Christmas Planner and track parcels not yet arrived and cards not yet written. Keeping an eye on the nuts and bolts of the season and running it like a military operation for Christmas happens not by accident but by design and the most darling of festive seasons feature both the traditional -to keep the sticklers happy - and the new - to delight those always happy to ring the changes.

And then there is something to do: a school Nativity to watch, a hair appointment to attend before a weekend party, a gift to be collected or a friend to visit. We are busy, busy, busy and rush about with flushed cheeks, warm hearts and cold hands spreading bonhomie and gathering all the tiny little somethings we cannot create Christmas without.

For make no mistake we are CREATING Christmas and we know all too well that it is the things that we forget most likely to be remembered by those who haven’t had lists longer than their arm to be bought and wrapped, baked and cooked!

At home again we hide the Elf On the Shelf somewhere preposterous and get ready to serve hot chocolate to the home-comers, warming their jim-jams on the radiators so they can climb straight into them and then sitting them down in front of our blazing fire to sip chocolate and take turns picking out one of the treats in the advent basket-a pile of festive wrapped DVDs, games and sweet surprises for each and every night before Christmas Eve.

Festive suppers are simple affairs: warming soups and good bread and cheese. Slow- cooker stews and quick pasta dishes. Food we do not have to think about because we have so many other meals to plan: the perfect Christmas Eve breakfast of Bucks Fizz and Kedgeree. The Christmas Dinner. A Boxing Day Turkey Curry. A recipe for a baked ham to be enjoyed daily in the lazy days between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.

Then when Supper is done we wrap any gifts we have bought that day. Bing dreaming of a White Christmas accompanying us as we tuck them under the tree, wrapped in love, or sneak around the house popping them in our secret Christmas hidey-holes, taking a moment to look inside our Christmas boxes: breathing in cinnamon oil and anticipating the moment we will pour out the Festive potpourri, empty nuts into bon-bon dishes and let Christmas begin in earnest.

Later we read festive stories chosen from the pile of treasured Christmas books we have stacked on the coffee table, lighting the advent candle and letting it burn through the day as we read. We light the fairy lights in the children’s bedrooms and tuck them in, listening to their Christmas hopes and dreams and reminding them to be grateful for all that they already have. For above all else gratitude matters at Christmas. No matter what our faith we sense the spirituality integral to the season and when we slip into our pine-scented evening bath we meditate on what it means to be able to show those we love how much they matter to us at Christmas.

And then it is the most precious hour of the day: the quiet hour. We mix up an eggnog and write cards by the light of the tree, just a few each night so we are never overwhelmed by the task, before picking up a Christmas novel, watching a seasonal sit- com or calling a far away friend we will not see during the holiday. Each night allowing a teeny little bit more excitement to build in our still so childish hearts.

At bedtime, we take homemade cinnamon muffin dough out of the freezer to defrost overnight, ready to bake for a cozy breakfast, lay unexpected tiny little gifts at each place setting at the table and sprinkle glitter on behalf of Santa’s Elves over the fireplace to remind children that Santa might still be deciding who is naughty or nice…

Then we climb into bed in a room diffused with frankincense and drift off to sleep happy and content.

This then is The Festive House.

PUTTERY TREATS

* Treat yourself to a luxurious candle and burn it for half an hour each evening for a terribly grown-up, sweetly scented version of the Advent Calendar.

* Buy sparklers for Christmas Eve and have your kids write messages to Santa in the sky.

* Ring the changes with goose or duck instead of turkey this year.

* Replace the ubiquitous tins of traditional Christmas sweets this year with vintage tins full of family favorites.

* Seek out an antique nutcracker and lay out a feast of shelled nuts on the sideboard in a pretty array of crystal bonbon dishes.

* Change your phone and tablet screensavers to something that represents the true meaning of Christmas to you. Sneak a peek whenever the madness of the season threatens to overwhelm you.

* Hang a bunch of mistletoe directly over your bed and start each morning off with a tiny little peck of joy.

* Buy Lebkuchen in the supermarket. They are cheap as chips, come in scrumptiously abundant packs and taste of Christmas. Just right for festive suppers with warm milk.

* Help the kids dress their favorite snugly toys up in their Sunday best.

* Use fabric stiffening spray to turn crocheted doilies into Christmas snowflakes.

* Eat a candlelight breakfast listening to Handel’s Messiah.

* Buy a large Christmas jigsaw and encourage the whole family to take turns putting it together during Advent.

* Keep a stash of cinnamon flavored popcorn in the pantry and serve it with Christmas flavored Cider for instant hygge when guests come around unexpectedly.

* Send little kids and big kids alike special Christmas cards by post. Sign them “Love Santa” and deny all knowledge thereafter.

* Add a jug of peppermint canes to your hot chocolate tray.

* Fashion a clothespin angel and let her top your tree. Or make a whole family of angels and hide them around the house “Elf on the Shelf” style with kisses for those who find them.

* Order a set of paper Victorian Dinner Party masks and wear them at the Christmas table instead of paper hats.

* Read The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell on Christmas Eve.

* Fill Summer hanging baskets with pine leaves, holly, ivy, and baubles.

* Make a gingerbread trifle and serve it for High Tea on the Sunday before Christmas.

* Tie up a row of pine cone bunting and string it around your kitchen.

* Simmer the sprigs of pine that fall off your Christmas tree with cinnamon sticks and lemon oil to quickly freshen the entire house with the scent of the season.

* Write a different Christmas Wish for your family on the kitchen blackboard daily.

* Ring the festive changes by sewing a Christmas Tree skirt from something fabulously floral.

* Fill a bowl full of clove-studded oranges for a traditional kitchen table centerpiece during the week before Christmas. Practice making patterns in the oranges with a lino cutting tool and let yourself get completely carried away with this meditative task.

* Start a scrapbook full of the charming letters and Christmas lists your children sent to Santa.

* Start a collection of cozy Christmas socks.

* Loop jingle bells over each and every door in the house so it always sounds as though an angel is being blessed with her festive wings.

* Occasionally sprinkle glitter over the fireplace during December and tell the kids it is Santa’s elves checking the chimney for Christmas morning.

* If getting children to write a long list of thank-you notes strikes you as arduous in the extreme, have little ones write one lovely letter to Santa after Christmas and send it to all those kind enough to have blessed them with gifts.

* Serve every bowl of breakfast cereal with a handful of tiny marshmallows in the week before Christmas.

* Add pomegranate juice to mulled wine and serve with a grating of ginger for a fresher take on traditional mulled wine recipes.

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DECORATIVE TOUCHES FOR FESTIVE JOY

* Buy a white poinsettia and cut off the flowers to display in glass jars full of water: a cheap and pretty way to fill the house with festive flowers.

* Find a tray with high sides and fill it with votives, candlesticks, forced bulbs, and sprigs of greenery. Fragrant, twinkly and festive - Just right for the coffee table.

* Channel a ski lodge vibe by throwing fuzzy fake fur blankets over the end of every bed in the house.

* Have a row of forced snowdrops on your bathroom windowsill.

* Wrap a row of seventies style multi-colored fairy lights over children’s headboards on Christmas Eve, so they wake up to a room full of Christmas.

* Bleach pine cones and line them up along a fairy-lit mantle-piece.

* Mix a mason jar full of baubles among the more mundane jars of flour and beans on your kitchen counter.

* Stand your Christmas tree in a log basket lined with a cozy blanket.

* Fill enormous glass vases with boughs of floppy evergreen branches and decorate with baubles for a bohemian take on the Christmas tree. Perfect on the hall table.

* Dip walnuts in gold glitter and add them to mixed bowls of nuts on your festive treats sideboard.

* Make pretty pyramids of Christmas crackers on vintage cake stands in the dining room.

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FESTIVE HOUSEHOLD RECIPES

T
he Scent of Christmas

Five drops of Cinnamon oil, ten drops of Pine Oil, and seven drops of Orange oil, one cup of distilled water and one cup of vodka.

Blend all ingredients in a pump-action bottle and shake. Spritz around each and every room of the house daily…

Seasonal Floor Cleaner

Two tablespoons of unscented washing-up liquid, one mop bucket full of hot water, fifteen drops of Pine oil and a large sprig of rosemary.

Fill your mop bucket with boiling hot water from the kettle, add the washing up liquid and essential oil, then crush the rosemary sprig in your hand and add to the water. Allow to stand for fifteen minutes, then mop tiled floors with this deliciously energizing brew…

Festive Peace Blend

One drop of Frankincense, one drop of Cinnamon, one drop of Mandarin and one drop of orange oil.

Diffuse in the living room when the madness of the season gets too much for you…

FESTIVE JOURNALLING PROMPTS

* Write about the first Christmas you can remember.

* In an ideal world what would Christmas Day look and feel like?

* Make a list of all the things you love about your own family Christmas’s.

* Dream up a list of new Christmas rituals.

* Write down your favorite memories of a Christmas spent with someone now gone.

* Make a fantasy Christmas list for Santa.

* Write a letter to someone you love saying thank-you for all that they are.

* List all those things essential to your heart and home at Christmas time.

* Journal all that you can remember from your children’s first Christmas so that you can treasure the memories forever.

* Make a list of your favorite Christmas films, episodes and music and note down why you love them so.

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FESTIVE READING LIST

Though it might be hard to find the time to read during December, when we do manage

to steal an hour or two for ourselves, picking something truly festive is key to capturing the very essence of the season…

T
he Santa Claus Murder by Mavis Hay

Oh what a treat for atmospheric festive evenings by the fire! If you like traditional cosy murder mysteries with your mince pies then this is the finest of its golden-age genre. I devoured it in one sitting…

A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flag

Who wouldn’t want to meet the ladies of the Mystic Order of the Royal Polka Dots Secret Society?

If you haven’t read it and you love Fannie Flagg as much as I do, then spending Christmas in the company of the residents of Lost River will be bliss.

Little Women by Louis May Alcott

There are books in this world that I do believe we should read once a year and the charming world of our own Little Women is surely one we should squeeze in to each and everyone of our Christmases?

The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern

It’s a Wonderful Life IS Christmas for so many of us and this is the story that started a tradition at the very heart of the season…

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

Just right for those days when you are feeling a little “Bah Humbug”, this light-hearted quick read is a reminder of what Christmas is all about…

Christmas In the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

For big girls and little girls alike, this is a gorgeous reminder of the simplest pleasures of the season and quite the most perfect excuse to knit yourself a pair of cosy red mittens…

Betty Leicester’s Christmas by Sarah Orne Jewett

Any book that starts with the legend “Betty Leicester, in a new winter gown which had just been sent home from Liberty’s…” has to be worth devouring over a slice of Christmas cake now doesn’t it? Delightful in the way only old-fashioned stories of its ilk can be…

Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb

This is such a specific description of a place in time that one is quickly lost in a 1960’s Christmas and frankly never wants to leave. If I had to choose only one book on this list, this would be the one because it is charming and fun. You are welcome.

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THE FESTIVE HOUSE

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before! What if Christmas, he

thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit

more!” —Dr.Seuss.

M
ake the most of Christmas won’t you?

Love Alison.x