1st of Advent, first snow & studio news

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear blogging friends, readers and viewers! I'm so sorry for the long absence again, I always have so much to blog about but so little time. Yesterday was the first of Advent, only 24 days left until Christmas and I took a few photos of my festive decorations for you.

I created 3 small x-mas stockings from another template out of Julie Collings book "Pretty little felts". They are made from felt of course and lace etc. and then my dear cousin Stefanie sewed them together for me, because I have no sewing machine. I'm quite happy with the way they tuned out and decorated them on my faux fire place/mantle, you can always enlarge my photos bei clicking on them to see more details.

This year I found 2 of the gorgeous cone candles and put them in my silver vases on the mantle.

Then I decorated one of my chandeliers with silver stars, diamond pendants and glitter snowflakes as well as a new pretty silver cone. I tried to get a good picture of it with the candles glowing and no flash, but they came out a bit blurry:

Here's a sneek peak of a parcel I send out to Cerri of the Little pink studio last Friday, hopefully she'll get it soon because I put all my favorite German Living and Crafts magazines, the Christmas issues in it:

Last Sunday (November 30) we had our annual Winter magic market at my friends cottage at the country side and my Dad was so kind to build me a Christmas tree from a broomstick. I used it to present all my pendants and ornaments and it is very useful in my studio too now to organise my pendants. Thank you very much again Dad! :)

This is what my little booth looked like. The horse stables at my friends cottage are such a beautiful surrounding for our Winter magic market.

In the next photo you see a close up of one of my new Winter/Christmas pendants/ornaments. Got the sweet wintery sleigh girls picture from a scanned old postcard from my friend Anita. I think the mica flakes really give the pendant the look of snow:

On November 22nd we woke up to a real Winter wonder land here in Bremen and I started taking pictures right away, it was still a bit dark outside, but everything looked so magical in my garden and I so like that you can even see the snow softly falling down in the pictures (click to enlarge the photos!):

Here's what my front garden looked like covered in soft new snow:

Of course when it's cold outside it has to be warm and cosy inside so I lit my red glowing candle glasses. The paper/cardboard cake stand in the photo below is one of my latest creations. I used 45 year old paper lace and silver Dresdens borders to embellish it:

Next is a photo of my latest Vintage Wallpaper Wallbox, this time I chose other colors than usual. It was custom made for someone in the US with the intials M S, but she couldn't afford it in the end, because of the high mailing costs to the US and other reasons, so it's still in my studio and I think I'll have to put the letters M S off:

Talking about my studio here is a mid November picture of one of my fave corners in the studio, although it's constantly changing, meanwhile it looks much more festive:

At the beginning of November I told my mum about an old paper cutter I had seen in the latest German Country Living magazine issue and showed her the photo and told her that I would like to find one like this fpr my studio too and then she said to me "wait a moment, I think I have what you search", went down in the basement and came back up with this beautiful old paper cutter. Score!!! She was so clever to save it from the bulk garbage of her neighbors a few years ago, which was my luck now :)) Thank you mum!

I decorated it with pretty vintage ribbon on wooden spools, my new twine holder and an antique Santa ornament:

Another peek in my studio. The small glass container is filled with pretty Yoyos I got send from my dear friend Anita of My Country Cottage Garden http://ein-stueck-garten.blogspot.com/ last month:

And lastly I leave you with a photo of some very pretty Christmas craft supplies I recently purchased from Brandy over at the Brandyvine boutique:

Have a great time at the run up for Christmas everyone!

Hugs Carola xox