*Happy New Year*

I really hope you all had a wonderful Christmas filled with lots of love and lovely surprises, and thank you so much to all who sent messages of thought about our friend. Unfortunately he is still in a coma and is still very very poorly so please keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Wishing you a wonderful New Year and hope that it is filled with love, happiness and good heath for every one of you.

Thank you all for visiting here over the last year and leaving me such wonderful messages and e-mails you are all super lovely and I appreciate you all more than I could ever tell you.

*Happy New Year Everyone*

*Christmas Time*

Eeek, well it is nearly here isn't it! So I thought I would show you a few photos of what chez Vintage Amethyst is looking like at this time of the year.
I did take these photos quite quickly yesterday before my mum was popping round for something hot and a mince pie!

Well above is our living room with the tree of course! It's 7 feet tall. It's an artificial one as we just couldn't find a nice real one last year as non of them just didn't look nice & tall enough, they all seemed to be squat & plump, all the good ones seemed to have been bought up so we bought this one in a mad dash last year in Homebase!



Here is the side of the fireplace, boxes wrapped in brown paper and red & white gingham ribbon are under the tree, I bought a big roll of ribbon and went to town decorating with it! So simple yet so festive.




Here is our bookcase on the other side of the fireplace, as you can see I did manage to get some of the Noel letters I was selling in the shop for myself. I did sell them all out but managed to get some of the letters at the last minute and painted them quickly for us putting the decorations up!




Here is the little vintage wreath I have up every year, it was my Nana's and I luckily received it when she died. I think it is from the 50's or 60's going by the look of it. I used to love it when I was little, she always hung it on the back of her front door and I used to spend ages looking at the cute little red flock reindeer, isn't it sweet.



Side of the fireplace. That little red basket was a gift basket with smellies in that I received last year and thought how lovely it would be as a festive decoration, so this year I filled it with handmade red felt hearts, candy canes and a little plump felt snowman



This is something that I made last year. I had found some bell wreaths in the pound shop and they looked pretty ugly but thought they would be fab for the bells, so bought a couple and pulled them apart to make little dangly bells. These are fab hanging from the door as they jingle as you open and close it. I made some with silver ribbon for the dining room too.



This little cutie is a gingerbread man I made with coffee stained calico, I think he is so cute in his homespun way.



A plump angel with button legs sits on our staircase.



An here is a Home Sweet Home sign I made for the hallway and grubbied up with a tea stained look. Below is a felt garland I made too.

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We have had some awful news recently. One of our friends has meningitis and is very very poorly. He is in a critical condition and is on life support after collapsing, luckily at his parents house as if he was alone he wouldn't have made it and on Sunday morning they didn't think he was going to make it, but he is fighting on so please send a prayer this Christmas for him & his family or send positive healing thoughts his way.
I am hoping by the miracle of Christmas he wakes up tomorrow as it is our 4th Wedding Anniversary this Christmas Eve, we were married in a 'secret' wedding 10am Christmas Eve morning with only 2 witnesses with us (no-one else knew about it) and this friend was one of them, so I have been convinced that he is going to wake up for Christmas on Christmas Eve and give his family and friends the best gift ever. I really hope I am right.

***

Eeek, I can't believe it is our 4th Wedding Anniversary tomorrow, the time has flown by. James proposed to me on Christmas Day morning the year before so that will be 5 years ago this Christmas, and we first got together 16 years ago this Christmas Eve, goodness how time speeds by! (Are we the Christmas couple or what! Tee Hee ~ or should that be Ho Ho Ho!)

Well I shall be off now and I don't think I will get another chance before Christmas ~ so sending you lots of love & merriment for the special day, and I hope you received everything you wished for and have wonderful fun filled day with loved ones.

*Merry Christmas Everyone*

*A Cath Kidston Christmas*

Has anyone entered the Cath Kidston Christmas Stocking competition?

I'm afraid I've left it a bit late and with being so busy don't think I will have time to enter now as it closes on Wednesday!

I didn't even get around to entering the 'Make your own Christmas Decoration from a loo roll' one although I did have a loo roll waiting for me just beside my computer screen for a while and always had to peer over it if I wanted to see the time, but the competition closed before I got around to doing anything about it, sigh.

Anyway if you want to have a go at the Stocking Competition click *here*.

These photos are some I took on my birthday when we went shopping in York, the Cath Kidston Christmas window looked so lovely, filled to the brim with wonderful goodies, very festive & pretty! I love those little red slippers just there below don't you! So cute.

Eeek we are putting up our decorations tonight so I'm very excited!

The bubbly will be a flowing as we make our way through the boxes of festive goodies asking each other champagne flute permanently fixed in one hand of course 'does this look good there or not, I can't decide?' or 'where did we put this last year?'

We have an awful lot of fun & giggles listening to the old crooners signing wonderful Christmas songs. I'm not a huge fan of the more modern songs, although really can 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' be classed as modern seeing as it was from before I was born!!! Although saying that I do actually like that one!!!

James' favourite is 'God Bless you Gentlemen' and we always have to stop and sing along quite loudly to that one!

The bubbly does keep a flowing until we are generally a bit too giddy & giggly and decide it is finished!

It generally isn't of course ... but at least the tree is up!

*Christmas Shopping Dates*

Just a quick reminder about Christmas shopping dates for the website.

Any orders for Christmas can you please make by Monday 15th December, so that I can get all the orders processed and sent out to you in time for Christmas.
Orders after this date will still be processed that week but may not reach you in time for Christmas due to busy postal services, so the earlier you order the better.
Any orders place after Friday 19th December may not be processed until the Monday after Christmas, Monday 29th December and may take a few days longer than normal to arrive due to shortened postal hours over the New Year period.

The *Noel Collection* stock levels are running low too, unfortunately all the Noel letter have been sold and I won't be getting anymore. I am down to the last ones of many of the items in that collection so if there is anything you have had your eye on buy it before it is gone.

You have all being keeping me a busy little elf over these last few weeks, so thank you to everyone who has been ordering for Christmas gifts, although there are quite a few of you I know that have been treating yourselves!!! Tee hee ~ good on you too I say! I seem to have been doing the same thing lately too, and have had some cute buys just recently!
Well stay warm & cosy everyone ~ we have had a lot of snow & ice recently have you? (Lovely!)
Keep warm & well everyone & hope all your Christmas preparations are coming along nicely.

*Christmas Pegs*

Look what cuteness I received in the post at the weekend!
The lovely *Catherine from Mollycupcakes* very kindly sent along a little gift for me as a treat for my birthday.
She very kindly said I could pick anything from her cute website, and so I had to decide upon these cute white pegs with red dots. Aren't they so adorable for Christmas?



I haven't even used them yet, although I need to to sting my Christmas cards up, but to be honest I can't bear to take them out of the packaging as they just look so cute all lined up, don't you think. So at the moment they are proudly sitting on my cake stand on the dresser.

Thank you so much Catherine you adorable girly girl, I love them!
I hope you like the goodies I sent along for you, and have a wonderful birthday yourself on Wednesday and save a slice of cake for me won't you!
***
Pop along to Catherine's website *Mollycupcakes* for more absolutely adorable goodness!

*Dining Room*

Well following on from *this* post, we finally got around to re-decorating our dining room at the weekend. I still have a touch of tweaking to do, but the painting and wallpapering are done at least.

So here is our dining room above, now firstly notice the beautiful wallpaper! I didn't mean to buy this but after we had painted the room off we trotted to Laura Ashley on Saturday afternoon to find some fabric to cover the Lloyd Loom ottoman by our window and what did we find but this stunning wallpaper, and ladies I'm going to make you so jealous here but you will never guess how much it cost .... £1.50 a roll!!!! Yes that's right £1.50 a roll, so we snapped the last 4 rolls up quickly! I had intended it for the bedroom but when we got it home, it looked lovely against the Barley White of the walls, so we hummed and ahhhhed about it but finally decided, no the dining room should have it, and I'm so please we did as it looks so lovely!

Now please try to ignore the slight ugliness of the cabinet in the corner of the room as this is our computer cupboard so that all our computer thingys are shut away and out of sight. It is from Ikea and 5 years ago this is the nicest one we could find that was big enough for us!

The lavender heart above it are the ones I sell in my shop and notice the cream rose garland on the mirror too! I love this garland, it generally gets moved around the dining room but I am liking it on the mirror at the moment.



On the opposite wall to the mirror is this our beautiful dresser which is painted in Farrow & Balls Off White. I was going to paint it but actually against the Barley White walls it has now took on a more stone grey appearance which is what I wanted to change it too anyway, so I am just leaving it now. My Nana's tea set sits atop of the dresser, I will have to take a photo of it properly one day. The open part at the bottom between the two cupboards is where we store our bubbly! Well a girl has to have a bubbly store, doesn't she!



This clock was a wonderful birthday present from our friend Paul and I just love it! He had bought himself one recently and I spied it and was co-oing and aaahhing over it and what did he do go out and buy me one! So sweet!



Now these huge painted baskets are a recent buy, the above one is the smallest of the two and here is the largest one below. James and I both just loved the greyness of these and I'm so glad we bought them as they look so lovely in the dining room. They were another bargain, they were £29 reduced from £53!!!
The candle stick holder has been given a make over too, I had previously painted it in a pretty duck egg blue and rubbed almost all back to the dark wood but seeing as it had been like that for a good while I decided it needed another makeover and I love its new look.



Ooohh look you can see a closeup of that pretty wallpaper, I fell in love with it instantly as it has little butterflies all over it, and I do love anything with butterflies on!

Hope you liked the little sneak peek into our dining room, it still needs a few things finishing but at least the main part of it is done, and I am so happy with the wallpaper, did you see how pretty it was, you did didn't you and did I tell you what a bargain it was ....

*Tiny tiny cuteness!*

I came across *this* wonderful website with thanks to the beautiful Tara Frey.
World's Smallest Postal Service, just look how adorable those little teeny tiny letter are?

Imagine tiny ones getting these little cuties from the tooth fairy or any fairy for that matter, but seeing as the festive season is upon us just imagine how exciting it would be to get one of these letters from Santa's elves!
Ooohh my heart just bursts with cuteness at these little things!
Visit the *website* for more information on how to get one of these teeny tiny touches of magic.
Just too cute!