Christmas 2020 Christmas Magazine Number Three - Country Living Christmas

I quite like this magazine.  It has some nice unfussy  but different projects to make some Christmas presents yourself or decorations including paper roses, clay star-decorations/present tags, linocut Christmas cards, an eco-friendly Advent calendar, your own stamped wrapping paper, Solstice Crackers, a Secret Diary gift box, mulled spice wine bag to add to a bottle of wine, iced tree decorations, iced tree decorations, an everlasting wreath made from scraps of cloth.  There are also simple ideas for decorating the house and making use of what you have around you.  These magazines have some lovely ideas, but you can take the basic ideas and then use what you have available.  

Being inspired or getting inspiration starts off with a basic outline of what you intend to achieve, but more often or not leads to some lovely decorations which you have put your own stamp on.  Take for instance vintage or modern cake stands.  I collect and use both. You can turn them into something different.  I have two white large cake stands for my table and I have seen a similar stand used in this magazine with the aid of a small cloche to create a miniature Christmas scene. I have in my stash various different Cloches of different sizes and I believe I have two that can be used to cover the whole of the cake stand.  I will investigate that further and if I am correct I have a couple of decorations either for the table or the dressers, easily to hand.  

Alternatively with vintage cake stands of different sizes you can stack three different sizes together and either serve sweetmeats on them or create light features by stacking tealights on each layer. Equally you could stack different sized Church candles on the stands or the artificial ones. There is something magical about candlelight at Christmas and I do so think it sets the scene, all of this started by a glossy picture in a Christmas magazine.

There are some superb articles about specialist businesses and some beautiful homes - the dream homes for many of us. Lovely as it is and it is promoting Artisan products, sometimes we need practical projects that we can do at home and make ourselves. I think perhaps a lot of the magazines are missing a trick in this respect, as there are many younger people who are very interested in having a go but may not know where to start.  There needs to be a balance. They need practical tuition on good food that will feed the soul and the body but not cost the absolute earth to produce.

In the food section a lovely selection of recipes including old faithful recipes together with newer incarnations.  The Christmas pudding recipe uses dried sour cherries, dried strawberries, dried cranberries and dried blueberries as well as dried prunes, apricots and figs and uses ginger wine and raspberry liqueur.  A very different recipe.  There is also a recipe for pear and fig chutney which I think will go very nicely with goat's cheese.

The photos of wildlife are stunning as well.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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