Newcastle Photographer and Content Creator, Mandy Charlton, Always on a quest for adventure, often seen on buses, trains and planes. On a quest to be happier and healthier. Lives in Newcastle with her 3 cats, Iris, Maggie and Arthur. Loves good vibes, musicals and cakes. Full time professional wedding photographer in the north east of england alongside content creator on Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Christmas 2017 - The day, I took an extra day off



Today I took some extra time off, I'm trying so hard to spend as much time with Looby during the week, I've mentioned 347 billion times that I home educate during the week but it's November and people are panicking about Christmas already, it's always the same, I wish I could edit every single image I take at a weekend by a Monday and sometimes I do, I never take longer than 7 days for portraits and 4 weeks for weddings. I wish that I could clone myself and have more availability, I wish that I had the ability to magically appear on everyone's desk to tell them "It's December, your voucher you bought 12 months ago which expires soon, it's 12 months later"  My health and parenting Looby is paramount, they're the most important things and today I just needed time to be, time to put down my phone, put my iMac to sleep and festively decorate our house, research shows that people who put up their Christmas trees earlier are happier and maybe that should be the lesson of the day, put up your Christmas trees, admire the twinkly lights, open up a bottle of Baileys or in my case, break into the Amaretti biscuits and Turrone early whilst everyone is in bed.

I've always loved Christmas, it's the season of Joy and overwhelmingly people are nicer to each other, at least in the Christmas period when everyone stops and doesn't have to think about life, work or their problems for a couple of weeks.  There's something about sitting with tree lights festively twinkling which makes the world seem better, our house was made for Christmas, I love cosy and I hate my lounge in summer because with one wall being a giant window, it gets to be like a greenhouse, also cosy doesn't work so much in summer so I wait all year for autumn and winter when my house comes into its own and that's never more so than during the festive season, for me, Christmas really is a season.

As you might have worked out thus far, I don't do Christmas decor by halves, it's my time to shine, it's my time to light up the world with my interior decorating skills, each paper snowflake, each bauble must be in exactly the right place, I'm a little anal about it all which is weird because for most of the year I seem to live in disorganised chaos, maybe we should just keep our trees up all year around?

If you came here for photographs then you are in luck, they're all pretty low light and taken with my iPhone 8Plus which is actually astonishing, of course, yes it's about the person using it but they really have got better and better.  Now if you'd like to see my home in previous years there's Christmas 2016 and Christmas 2015 to start, I'm pretty sure you'll find 10 years or more if you just search it.  I think though, (after just scanning back) I've really nailed it this year, everything is a little more sparkly and we even have outdoor lights courtesy of a very cool laser thing which cost all of £20 from Home Bargains.

My downstairs tree from the last couple of years has now made it into the garden and I've replaced it with a rather snazzy snowy half Christmas tree from Argos which cost £49.99 and then a few pounds for the lights, we didn't put any decorations on it as it looks so real and beautiful and our kitchen always has a snowy Narnia theme.

There's something special this year about my lounge, it's the same Christmas tree as last year and the year before but I paid around £150 for it, again, it's got a really high needle count so looks like a real tree, something which I almost demand in a Christmas tree.  I found an amazing set of Christmas tree lights in Fenwick and it's almost like a curtain, it's joined at the top, you put it over the tree and you get 680 lights all perfectly falling over the tree, amazing, no random wires with up to 6 sets, just 1 set which will come off as easily as this went on, I can't recommend them enough.



The next thing is to make sure my bedroom has some festive touches, Looby has had a forest of trees in her bedroom for a couple of weeks, I've ordered a festive duvet set featuring a beagle, I realise it's a bit cheesier than usual but hey, it's Christmas, I also said to Looby we need to sort out our hallway and hopefully everything will be fabulous and as near to perfect as we can get just in time for our Christmas party which is a week on Friday.

I hope you all enjoy festively decorating your houses, do you do the whole house, and more importantly, how many Christmas trees?  If I could find space, I'd have even more!
Share:

No comments

© Mandy Charlton - Photographer, Writer, Blogger | All rights reserved.
Blogger Template Designed by pipdig