Away In a Manger, No Room For A Tree...

As our sitting room is still a bit of a building site we haven't been able to put our Christmas tree up this year, although dave has managed to assemble some makeshift tables to hold the myriad cards we have received this year.
However, our dear neighbour Valerie gave us some beautiful holly boughs which I arranged in vases with cotton wool snow and micro glitter, dressed up with some tiny gold baubles. At least our windowsills look suitably festive!

The holly is absolutely laden with berries - I wonder if it would be possible to plant some in pots and grow a couple of bushes ourselves? It is one of those mysterious and sacred plants that suits itself, so it may not be that easy!

Another project for the Feastive season was to make some wax shells to hold tealights. This was very exciting as it involved balloons filled with water, melting beeswax in a double boiler, some leaves collected from Arrowthwaite woods in Arctic conditions and a certain amount of bad language...!
The  first step was to grate the beeswax, which was in a 700g block. As the weather has been so cold it had become like rock, and took quite a lot of brute force - luckily I have a husband who comes in very handy for this sort of thing, and he succesfully beat it into submission eventually!
Once grated and melted, the water-filled balloons were dipped, and dipped, and dipped. Lastly, the leaves were applied.
They looked really good with tealights burning in them, and I love the natural effect and the sweet smell of the beeswax.

This picture of them in The Hole With Potential doesn't really do them justice, but you get the general idea!