The most festive, least effort, cheapest Christmas idea!

You know that as well as fabulous and lovely, we also love cheap and easy, right? Well, this has got to be the cheapest and easiest idea for the Christmas season.

Lots of magazines and web sites are packed with ideas for lovely new Christmas decorations (cobalt blue seems a popular colour for lights this year). And lots of them also have hints for revamping old decorations. One that we saw suggested decoupaging existing baubles to give them a new look. Another was to revamp them with glitter and stick-on gems. But that seems to imply that old decorations need a new look - and although we have a firm policy of 'each to their own', we have to offer a respectful disagreement on this one!

Christmas decorations aren't meant to change each year. They're not meant to be fashionable. Half the fun is getting out the old, sagging cardboard box and seeing the decorations that were carefully packed away last year, and in some cases, each year for many years before that. They come out every year and the memories come out with them. The best decorations are not the newest but the ones that were given by someone special, made by someone special or come from a special place. (Although let's be honest, sometimes we enjoy the memory and discreetly leave the actual decoration in the box!)

So here is the most festive, least effort, cheapest Christmas idea - your old decorations are great and you don't have to do anything to them. Not one thing. Reuse what you have and enjoy them and then do exactly the same next year! Add to them if you want of course, but don't feel under any pressure at all (there'll always be something else at this time of year to feel under pressure about). Your tree might not be in this year's latest colour or design theme, but it will be original and full of things that are special to you. And we think that means it will be pretty fabulous and lovely.

Christmas Pudding Spiced Rum Recipe

We decided to test this recipe for Christmas Pudding Spiced Rum from the current Waitrose Kitchen magazine - isn't that nice of us? You're welcome! No really, not too much trouble at all...The recipe takes two weeks to infuse, so if you start today it will be ready by Christmas!


The ingredients are:

70cl bottle dark rum 

2 vanilla pods

2 large cinnamon sticks

2 star anise

3 whole cloves

75g light brown muscovado sugar

1 orange

First of all, a disclaimer. We didn't have quite the right ingredients, but decided to go ahead anyway. We didn't have any light brown muscovado sugar so used some dark brown soft sugar that was in the cupboard (it's a moist sugar like muscovado, so it should be OK). And we only had one cinnamon stick so decided to just add an extra one in the next day. 

The method is:

1 Pour 100ml rum into a small saucepan. Using a small sharp knife, split the vanilla pods down their length, then add to the pan with the cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and sugar. Using a vegetable peeler, pare thin strips of peel from the orange and add to the pan. Slowly  warm the rum over a low heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar; do not allow it to boil.

2 Pour the contents of the pan into a large, sterilised jar, then add the remaining rum. Once cool, tightly seal the lid and shake vigorously. Leave the rum in a cool, dark place and give it a good shake every day to muddle the spices.

3 After 2 weeks, strain and discard the whole spices and orange peel. Decant the rum into small new, sterilised bottles (or a larger one, if you prefer) to give to your lucky friends. 

So that's it. The rum is in the cupboard being muddled; we're trying not to get muddled preparing for Christmas. We'll report back on the rum when it's ready, by which time we may be more or less muddled than now!

(Just so we're clear, Waitrose owns the copyright to the recipe - although we take full responsibility for the pictures other than the one of the magazine itself.)

Very easy Christmas cushion covers

Now you know that we know Christmas is coming, but as far as we are concerned it doesn't start until after Thanksgiving. Now that Thanksgiving is over, we can go all out on the preparations!

This year, we decided to make some special Christmas cushion covers and have to share how - so easy. No zips or buttons or anything tricky like that. Just promise that you won't show any people who are serious about their sewing and might be upset if things aren't done properly? We love beautifully crafted items just as much as anyone else, but sometimes - for something that's only going to be used for a couple of weeks a year - all that's really need is a quick hack. So if you can keep a secret and use a machine to sew in a straight line, you can make these envelope-style cushion covers with minimal expense and effort:

Here's how.

1. Get your cushion pads. We used some we had already had in the cupboard.

2. Measure:

We had two that were 23 inches square and one that was 17 inches square. (They were only whole numbers in imperial measurements, so that's what we went with.)

3. Calculate:

For the big cushion we needed a height of 23 inches, plus 2 inches for seams, and a width of 23 inches x 2 plus 6 inches for overlap (this is the most complicated bit). So that's 25" x 52". For the small one it's 18" x 42". That makes a total we needed of 68" x 52".

4. Choose:

This is Fryetts Fabric 'Vintage Christmas' in Rouge:

(To be honest, we saw it ages ago - but didn't buy it because Christmas doesn't start til December, right?)

Furnishing fabric usually comes in widths of 54" so we needed a length of 68" (or 1.8 metres).

5. Cut:

Because furnishing fabric usually comes in lengths of 54", we cut two lengths 25" x 54". That meant for the larger cushions the overlap of the 'envelope' would be a bit bigger, but the hemming would be easier, because of the selvedge, the self-finished edge of the fabric, which doesn't fray. For the smaller cushion, we cut a length 19" x 42", because otherwise it would end with too much fabric wrapped around the pad.

6. Sew:

We put each piece face down turned down half an inch along the top and bottom, pinned and sewed. 

(Always put the pins in at right angles like in the picture - that way you can sew straight over them and remove afterwards. If they are in lengthways, the needle will hit them and break - annoying, time consuming and possibly dangerous if you get a piece of needle in the eye.) The proper thing would be to fold the fabric over on itself, tack down and then sew, but for our purposes doing it this way was fine.

Then we turned in each side edge (selvedge) and did the same.

On a smaller cushion, you have to turn each side hem that isn't a selvedge over on itself because otherwise it will fray and the strands will shed.

So now you have, for each cushion, a flat piece of fabric with all the edges turned in and sew down. At this stage, don't be surprised if it looks a bit big!

7. Fold:

We laid it down, folded the left side in and then the right side on top with an overlap. The width should be the same as the width of the cushion pad. Then we pinned the top and bottom edges in place and sewed. 

8. Turn:

We turned the cover inside out, slipped the pad through the gap and plumped up the cushion. The results are in the picture at the top of the page.

So that's it, Christmas preparations have begun! 

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming...