A MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

Hello all,

I hope all of you who celebrate Christmas had as great a day as we did. We've become quite adept at organising large family gatherings and we're lucky enough to have a house that lends itself well to such events. There were 33 of us in the end, with my daughter's family in Holland and another family of six absent due to covid.

Every family brought a contribution to add to the feast but it was still a huge amount of work for the household. Cleaning up afterwards has its own challenges. In fact, I'm so tired, I debated whether I should write a post this week but, after an afternoon nap, I recovered sufficiently.

You can't have a party without decorating the house with ikebana arrangements. And I made a few.

I made a really big one in a large urn under the curved staircase. Securing the heavy branch of pine to face upwards was a challenge but once that was done, the flowers were relatively easy to place. At the back there are white agapanthus, in the middle alstroemeria psittacina, to the right are nandina domestica inflorescence and showing off at the front are three giant dahlias (for which I paid a small fortune and which died the next day). And lets not forget the giant, gold baubles.

With the offcuts from the pine I made a simple Christmas arrangement for a corner on the buffet table.

This next arrangement is almost as tall as the door and its position is by the front, glass entry. I moved it here to photograph, as it was lost against the glass. I had used this metal structure before at an exhibition at Sofitel some years ago. I added blue and white agapanthus and alstroemeria psittacina leaves.

On the dining table I placed a low arrangement with clematis only. This was done on Christmas eve. By lunch the next day, some of the flowers had wilted and I had to make a mad dash to the garden for replacements. However, cutting clematis is fraught with difficulties. It grows over my kefir lime and olive trees, attaching itself strongly with its leaf stalks and is very hard to find which is the vine you want to cut.

 And a little one for the coffee table, with a Jacobean lily and aspidistra leaf in a glass container.

There were people all over the house and garden making it impossible to take a group photo but I'll share with you this one of some of us girls.

Last Wednesday my class and I went for our breakup lunch at a lovely place called Warran Glen, where we dined al fresco and enjoyed the views of manicured gardens. It was a lovely way to end the year.

From left - Wendy Sun, Vicky Kalokathis, Lucy Papas, Shaneen Garbutt, Jenny Loo, Nicole McDonald, Emily
And squatting in front - Lei Wang and Bredenia Raquel.

With Christmas over, we cast our thoughts to the new year with hopes of a great improvement on the recent few.

Bye for now,

Emily