Sadly, having company for Christmas was not meant to be, as the French Government, scared about the amount of Omicron ravaging the UK, closed down its borders with the UK a few days before my brother was due to come here, so he is now home alone for Xmas, like last year *rolling eyes emoticon*. I don't blame them one bit; France has been very sensible all this year - we have had to wear masks indoors and we have our Covid Passes for entering places like cinemas, theatres, sporting venues and even bars and restaurants. However, I do feel that letting life get back to completely normal this summer (like in the UK) was just asking for trouble. That's not to say that there isn't Omicron in France, there is, it's just that we are used to wearing masks and being sensible, so it's not such a problem for us to go back to semi lockdown or curfew (apart from the usual minority who love to riot and complain for any reason whatsoever).
So where was I, yes I was in the mood for doing a bit of decoration and having found a bit of inspiration on Pinterest I started preparing turning some Le Parfait preserving jars into seasonal candle holders with decorated pine cones which I had collected back in the summer. Isn't it funny, I spent 15 years living at a property which had conifer trees galore and their cones in the garden, yet not once did I decorate with those cones for Christmas! 😀 Keith managed to take off the lids which are wired onto the jars and after painting my cones a mix of white, old gold and copper, I wired them around the neck of the jars. Unfortunately we only had green wire so I covered the wire as best I could with hessian ribbon and sisal string, then filled the inside with coarse salt to look like snow. I tied a little bunch of greenery to some berries and glued them to the string with a hot glue gun. I hope it comes off easily as I need to change my greenery as bay leaves don't last more than a few days, nor do my Pyracantha berries from my hedge!
Luckily I went for a little walk to a nearby track, armed with a tall man with a long pole, to see what kind of greenery I could find. I have come back with some branches which I wanted for another decoration (below), and some red berries from a Cotoneaster (I think) and black berries from Viburnum tinus, which grows wild all over the place here, plus a bit of someone's conifer hedge. 😁 I needed the tall things to help because this track is kept well maintained and cleared, so the greenery is hard to reach as it's either up a bank or down one. The track itself is part of the French network of the Grande Randonée paths and is in fact one going to Saint Jacques de Compostelle/Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Here are my branches decorated with baubles and fairy lights. It took about 5 minutes to decorate. My kind of tree!! 😂
I did actually buy a little tree from Lidl - I have bought one like this before and as it's in a pot with roots, you can put it outside after Xmas and keep it going for the next year! It was even decorated with the same blue decoration on elastic as the last one I bought years ago! I added some fairy lights and a few baubles as it was a bit bare.
Back to the Le Parfait jars, here they are, looking a little droopy as the bay leaves didn't stay fresh for very long! I kind of guessed that would happen, and I expect to have to keep changing the greenery so I have a load of vases filled with the stuff I brought back from the hedgerows clogging up my laundry room!
I'm using battery operated tea lights this time but I could get my hand in to put a real candle in, you just have to be a bit careful about any greenery inside the pot if you use a real candle.
I put the rest of the cones that I decorated, larger ones, in a blue glass bowl and they look really nice. Great that I can reuse them for years to come and it really didn't take any time painting them. I just painted the edges; with the white paint it is supposed to look like snow, and the metallic ones only need the edges painting as well, saves on paint and saves on having to go outside and make a huge mess with a spray can!
By the way the oak table, six chairs and the huge dresser came with the house - we were absolutely delighted, and in turn left our old table and chairs at our last place for our young buyers who were happy too!
We've put up various fairy lights since then and I think that's more than enough. We have enough food to feed the 5,000 but I have to make mince pies again, as my first batch, the pastry was really weird and soggy when I was rolling it/cutting out my shapes, and now cooked it is soggy and not very nice. I did it in my processor up to the adding water stage, which I did by hand. I then found out that the flour I was using was T45, rather than the T55 plain flour that I normally use for just about everything. Keith had bought it from the supermarket thinking it was general purpose T55. Having looking up the difference, T45 is the most processed/least strong flour and is used for brioche, T55 is stronger and can be used for bread, croissants, pastries, cakes etc but for bread better to use T65 which is the strongest white flour. So I'm going to try again with my normal flour. What a pain!
Right that's it, Merry Christmas to you all and to my blogger friends, I will come round your blogs and see what you are all up to! I hope you have a great time over the festive period. Take care everyone and stay safe. xx
