When Christmas comes around, my boyfriend and I like to go all out; this year was no exception and Dave and I are pretty impressed with our efforts.

The Tree.

The White Company certainly knows how to do classy Christmas decorations, but these cute Snowman, Reindeer and Penguin decorations caught my eye in a recent online shop. They’re adorable!

These fantastic little Gingerbread Tree Decorations come from the Crafty at Heart shop on Etsy; their quality is excellent and they add such a fun touch to our tree.

The Present Advent Calendar.

Dave’s Birthday falls on the 25th December and last year, I booked a weekend away in the Lake District. However, this time, I decided to keep the two occasions separate and made a Present Advent Calendar for his Christmas present; that’s 24 days of gifts (big and small), for him to open each day.

Planning the whole thing was really exciting! The gifts were wrapped in a mixture of wrapping paper from Tesco and cloth bags from The Clever Baggers, with the numbers cut from gold card. I used plain gold and gold polka dot washi tape to securely hold the battery-powered fairy lights to a  wall in our living room and red and white twine with mini pegs to hang the presents from the lights – though the heavier ones were on the floor! It looked rather special making me proud of how it all turned out.

Dave has loved opened each day so far and has been pleased with his mixture of gifts. I can’t wait to see what he thinks of the remaining days and his Birthday present!

The Candles.

If you know me or follow on Twitter and Instagram, you’ll know that I love candles, especially in the seasons when the nights become darker earlier and it’s cold outside. Christmas candles have some of my favourite scents – anything spicy and it’s mine!

This year, we’ve had Yankee Candle’s ‘Cosy By The Fire‘, ‘Winter Glow‘ and ‘Christmas Eve‘ burning, along with The White Company’s ‘Winter’ Botanical Pillar, which is now quite possibly my favourite Christmas candle ever. It has an eye-watering price tag but is a slow burner and gives off wonderful aromas of citrus orange, cinnamon and clove, that it is definitely worth the purchase!

At the same time as getting the ‘Winter’ candle, a couple of the Silver Mercury Dome Tealight Holders also found their way in to the basket. These look really pretty and cast pretty patterns at night.

The Rest.

Being a massive fan of the Cottage-come-Country decor, this rustic red and white wooden Christmas Garland from Amazon is one of my favourite new additions to our Festive collection. It hangs on our fridge to match our red kitchen theme and looks great. For such a reasonable price, the quality is pretty good also!

As shoppers of Aldi, we often find ourselves picking up the random bits that do not relate to food or drink – Aldi goers, you know the items we mean! – and this definitely extends to when we shop in December. Dave loves the cheesy, light-up decorations and last year, we got the present stack, Santa and polar bear.

Our door Wreath comes from John Lewis and is a nice design of berries, fir, holly and pine cones; simple and effective.

In the past, I was very much all for classiness and elegance but now I’m really coming round to Dave’s way of thinking and am enjoying the more fun side to the Festive season. I love how we’ve done up our little place and have no doubt we’ll be adding more and more to our collection as time goes on!