ONE WEEK TO GO!! THIS TIME NEXT WEEK IT WILL BE CHRISTMAS DAY!!! WOOHOO 🎄
Here are some photos of me and my husband decorating our mains christmas tree, in our flat. We’ve gone for a new position by the window this year, I decided last Christmas I wanted it there as you can sit on both sofas and look at it and see it whilst you watch tv.
As usual we have gone for our red, gold and green theme 😍
Here are some of the new decorations my mum got us. She very kindly always gets us a new tree dec each year, in our chosen colour scheme. These ones are great.
Do you have a favourite Christmas decoration colour scheme?
Just like every year, I have a Harry Potter Christmas tree 🎄 it goes up in our bedroom.
So here it is in all its glory! Super happy with it again this year. Loving the addition of the floating candles too 😍
I love the coloured lights and that they are the Hogwarts house colours. I also have some star lights around our curtains (also Hogwarts house colours)
It looks super magical in our room, I love it.
The Sorting Hat works so well as a tree topper too!
Here are some of the new Christmas decorations I have bought this year 😊
Christmas lights ✨️
I love these retro style lights, the colours, the shape are so nostalgic from my childhood.
I love a coloured Christmas light.
This set of three lights us trees were so reasonable and I love how pretty and effective they are.
Our theme is a traditional vibe so I went for the red and gold ones.
I also picked up these twi cute little window lights. These are probably one of my fave are purchases. Also from Aldi.
I had to get this tradional style standing Santa as he just looks so jolly.
Perfect for our traditional theme.
And also got us some new bedding 🛌
I got us the one pictured above which is festive Guinea Pig bedding as well as a cute Capybara festive bedding. Love it.
And finally, I have bought some new baubles for our tree. I picked these up from Flying Tiger. I love to buy a couple of new baubles each year (which is probably a bad idea as we have loads haha)
Pumpkin Picking with my sister and my niece.Halloween ((Bounce)) class – Byford Bats 🦇Halloweem film day, snacks & chilling out. Pumpking painting 🎃Crafty Bats 🦇 Learning about Bats and creating a bat metal embossed decoration.Halloween Light Trail ✨️Pumpkin Picking with the fam 🎃Decorating for Halloween 🎃 Halloween nails 💅🏻 👻🎃🖤🧡Making my bat lego 🦇Colchester Zoo trail of terror with Sarah & Tim 😱Watching Scary movies 🎬
So, I had an idea to document some more memories on my blog. I used to do a lot more of these sort of posts before I started posting more book/reading content, and when I had more time haha, life seems to be busy these days!
So I thought as we are a quarter of the way through the year, I could do a quarterly memories update to capture 2025.
This is part one, the first three months of the twelve of 2025!
Let’s take a look.
January
I’m not always a fan of January. It always seems such a miserable month after the festivities if Christmas, but this one wasn’t too bad! Me & my husband went to London together for the day, we saw ‘Harry Potter and The Cursed Child’ (again) and had a delicious dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant.
There was more footie with my nephew and lots of reading this month!! I love making my new reading lists and new book purchases for the new year. I also had two baby showers to celebrate, which was lovely! Not a bad start to the year, really!
February
In February, we had some fun sleepovers with my Nephew’s and Niece, me and my twin sister played the OG ‘The Sims’ game on its re release anniversary special, so amazing nostalgia there! I went to London to meet up with my Uni friend Kirsty and we watched ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ Musical… we also had dinner with another friend afterwards which was a great catch up (The show was really good).
Me and my Twin sister also saw a show, but in Norwich, we watched Giovanna Fletcher in ‘The Girl on the Train’. It was so cool to see Gi in a show and it was done really well on stage (I love the book!!) Speaking of books, Me and some friends from work started up a reading library in our staff room which has been going well and is nicely stocked now.
This month I also added some colourful accessories to our bathroom to finish it off, (we had it redone at the end of last year), and I have been meaning to add some colourful for a while! And we, of course, enjoyed a lovely Valentines evening together at our favourite Turkish restaurant.
In the February Half Term me and my husband went away for a long weekend. We stayed in Norfolk at a lovely inn and enjoyed a chilled weekend! The pub was lovely and cosy, the food was brilliant (breakfast included, always a winner with us!) And we had a little trip to Banham zoo, which I haven’t been to in years. We even had a Meerkat experience whilst we were there as they were only £15 each, bargain. It was a lovely relaxing weekend, much needed.
March
We had lots of fun in March, including the football and limited edition Ed Sheeran stickers!! My besties little boy had his first birthday party (under the sea themed), and our new sofas finally arrived!!
There was lots of yummy food, including a work meal at Prezzo, Wagas with my sister and our friend Dan, as well as our traditional Mothers Day homemade Afternoon Tea with my sisters and a Mothers Day lunch with Mum. I’ve also been ill a lot this month with coughs and colds, which is not ideal, so here’s to a healthier April.
A few weekends ago me and my husband and I attended a Wreath Making workshop organised by some of his work colleagues, just a fun little Christmassy get together. Tim invited me along, too, because he knew this would be right up my street.
It was really fun, and although I got pricked by Holly several times, I really enjoyed creating my Wreath.
Here’s how it went…
As you can see from the final pictures just above, we went for very different themes. They both came out really well, and we now have two lovely, festive, homemade wreaths to decorate our home. We’ve popped Tim’s on the front foot and mine on the lounge door.
I hope this finds you well. I have bought us (me) a few extra little decorations this year, so I thought I’d share them with you!
Lets take a look!
These are some cute little string lights, battery-operated, that I found in Aldi.
They are little red and white Santa’s.
I’ve popped these in our lounge.
I picked up these three from a little Christmas market/shop with my husband and friend. It was quite a fancy place but they did have some quite reasonably priced little decorations. These little ones were only £1.75 each. A great gift or stocking filler.
I went for a big glitter Santa (See below) and two of the little ones, I like their shiny retro vibes. One is a Nutcracker and one is a little red van transporting a Christmas tree.
This Santa is so retro and nostalgic. As children we had a little version of this Santa that used to hang on our family Christmas tree and I LOVED him in all his glittery, festive glory. He eventually became a decoration on mine and my twin sisters little tree that was in our bedroom,. His glitter all came off eventually, he was well loved. This one will help keep his nostalgic, glittery awesomeness alive on our Christmas tree.
He fits our theme of red, gold and green so well too!
I also picked up this little penguin from Aldi, he was too cute and dare I say a little tacky (I love tacky!!), to leave behind!! He has pride of place in the lounge too.
I had to add a bit of extra festiveness to my book corner! I used to have these lights but unfortunately they broke. I love the retro lights and especially the pink ones, they are my favourite. They just look so lovely and nostalgic to me. Colourful Christmases for the win.
I reckon these will end up staying here all year to be honest, I just love fairy fights- especially in my book corner.
Have you bought any new decorations? If so what did you get?
This is always one of my favourite posts to do for Blogmas! Anyone who knows me or has followed me on here will know that me and my twin sister are big Harry Potter fans, so this is of course one of my favourite parts of decorating…
The Harry Potter Christmas tree.
I have collected quite a few different Harry Potter tree decs over the years, and in more recent years they have become much easier to come by with shops such as Primark selling quite a vast range each year.
I have also bought a few from our various trips to the Warner Bros tour in Watford. We went for the ‘Hogwarts in the snow’ event and it was truly magical , as was the Christmas merch in the shop.
The Harry Potter tree has a brand new location in the flat this year. We have had a lot of redecorating done and with added furniture etc it couldn’t really fit nicely in the master bedroom, so it has taken up residence in our spare room, which is basically an office (So my husband will feel very festive when he works from home, whether he likes it or not haha)
Lets take a look!
I love it!
I was so chuffed a few years ago when I found Christmas lights that were the Hogwarts house colours. I also love the way that Gryffindor house ribbons look instead of tinsel.
I do have a Harry Potter tree topper but I was unable to locate it this year so I went back to my original tree topper of my Sorting hat (which tbf looks pretty awesome)
Here we are with day three of Blogmas 2024, and this one is a very festive one… putting up the Christmas tree.
This is a staple Blogmas post and I love snapping pictures of our lovely tree (Biased I know!) Plus there is nothing quite like a Christmas tree twinkling in your lounge to get you into the festive spirit.
Our Christmas tree colours are red, gold and green – very traditional. We also have some more personal ornaments, creations from my nephews and niece, sentimental ones from different years, and holidays etc.
I love getting all our decorations out each year and enjoying them and reminiscing whilst you hang them up. Me and my husband always decorate our main tree together.
Lets take a look!
The flat is feeling so festive and cosy now – I love it! Walking into the lounge just makes me smile (although it does take an age to turn all the different plugs on haha.)
Have you put your tree up yet? When do you traditionally do yours?
Roseanne Byford 