Blog: new wives club
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New Wives Club Christmas Special: quirky illustrated recycled wrapping papers and tapes from Alice Palace

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Recycled Christmas wrapping paper

Have you wrapped your Christmas gifts yet?  If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you’ll know that I’m way behind this year due to some home renovation, but I’m looking forward to getting festive this coming week when hopefully all will be finished.  Yey!

My wrapping paper of choice is most often a simple brown paper parcel tied up with raffia, but when I saw these from Alice Palace with their beautiful hand-drawn images I was in love.

Quirky illustrated wrapping paper and tape

Decorated with joyous festive images such as robins, mince pies, geese, holly berries, Christmas puddings and even a lovely snow bunny – they are so fun and I’m sure your family and friends would be delighted to received parcels wrapped up in this paper.  What’s even better is that Alice Palace’s wrapping paper is made from 100% recycled paper and printed using vegetable inks.

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New Wives Club Christmas Special: a rustic driftwood star garland from Miki Organic

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Driftwood star garland

Following on from last week’s gorgeous willow Christmas tree skirt I’m back to share another lovely festive find.  This string of driftwood stars is available from online eco-chic shop Miki Organic and would be a pretty addition to your Christmas decorations, especially if you love the natural look.

Each garland is just under a metre long and costs £15.  If you haven’t come across Miki Organic before you must check out their beautiful collection of homewares and gifts all underpinned by their ethos of sustainable, ethical, and beautiful.

Tomorrow I’ve got a fantastic DIY Christmas project so do check back for more festive fun as part of my Natural Wedding Christmas Special.

Image: Miki Organic

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New Wives Club Christmas Special: a beautiful rustic willow Christmas tree skirt from Rowen & Wren

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Rustic willow Christmas tree skirt

Happy 1st of December everyone!  Yesterday afternoon I mentioned that I was going to make these four weekends in the run up to Christmas all about crafting, decorating and gifts for the festive period, so here I am with the first of those specials.  To make it easy to find all the special Christmas blog posts, I’m going to tag them with ‘Natural Wedding Christmas Special’.

Handwoven willow Christmas tree pot

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New Wives Club #6: how to grow your own cut flowers – equipment and how to grow

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Last week on the New Wives Club we started this two part feature on how to grow cut flowers by looking at what to grow.  If you missed the part one, make sure you catch up by reading ‘how to grow your own cut flowers – what to grow’ first.

Today I have the concluding part of this lovely feature by Chloe from BareBlooms, looking at the equipment you need and a step-by-step guide on how to grow your chosen flowers.  You’ll also find some top tips from Chloe at the bottom of the post, along with a glossary like we included in part one.  So without further ado I hand you over to Chloe…

Equipment

There is a lot of choice out there (seed trays, modules, pots etc) but as a lover of thrift I’m going to concentrate on the budget options.  I like to sow larger seeds into Jiffy 7s – these are little dehydrated compost pellets – and the advantage of these is that you don’t need to buy bags of seed compost, which is handy if you’re short of space.  For those who are environmentally-minded you can get peat-free ones made from coir.

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New Wives Club #5: how to grow your own cut flowers – what to grow

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jam jars of homegrown flowers

The idea of growing your own cut flowers seems to be popular at the moment, with many of us dreaming of a small patch of ground dedicated to our own supply of pretty blooms that we can raid to decorate ours homes.  The most difficult part, I find, is translating that dream into a reality.

In a bid to get myself a small patch of cut flowers, and to encourage and help you to as well, I’ve enlisted the help of Chloe from BareBlooms to share some of her tips on how to start your own cutting garden.  Chloe grows many of her own flowers for her business BareBlooms, which provides beautiful seasonal flowers for weddings, you may well have seen some of her work when I featured Rhiannon’s wild September bouquet on the blog.

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New Wives Club #4: how to make your own vintage teacup bird feeders

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Vintage teacup bird feeder

Wow, this feels very strange – a return to ‘normal’ blogging after an incredible month of offers and competitions (lots are still running so do take a look!).  And what better way to return, than with a lovely New Wives Club post and a guest post from the lovely Sharon from For The Love Of Vintage.

Vintage teacup bird feeders

Sharon came up with this fantastic idea to give a new lease of life for chipped vintage teacups – turning them into rather lovely bird feeders!  In her business, hiring out vintage crockery for weddings, the china understandably takes some wear and tear.  So Sharon came up with this idea for reusing some of the pretty teacups that are too good to throw away.

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New Wives Club #2: using vintage jelly moulds as tealight holders

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vintage jelly mould tealight holder

Welcome to my second New Wives Club post!  Today’s idea for reusing wedding finds in your home is my own idea, rather than one I’ve found online and recreated at home.  I have a soft spot for collecting vintage jelly moulds, the metal kind – I think it is something about the soft shapes and the worn brushed silver colour.  Anyway, just before Christmas I realised I’d got rather a lot and they were looking forlorn piled up in a corner of my office.  Somehow I decided I would use them over Christmas, upturned and filled with tealights – the glow they cast is so pretty and I was delighted with the result.

vintage jelly mould tealight holder

Obviously, this won’t work with the rabbit shaped moulds I have as they aren’t stable upturned, but any that sit flat when turned upside down are perfect.  One day I dream that I’ll have a large space on a dresser to display them all (and dread the day I have to dust them all), but until then I will be using mine to bring a pretty glow in the evenings to our home.

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