Christmas update!

Long time no see dear readers and blogging friends, I know that and I feel very bad about it to my excuse I had a very busy season so far with lot's of office work, weekly back treatments and gymnastics, friends over to visit me, a fabulous private Christmas market which we had organised together with friends and my sisters, lot's of soldering Christmas pendants, making Christmas cones and collages etc. for our Winter magic market, lot's of swap parcel packing and so on and on. I always hoped to have some time to blog during the day or in the evening, but there rarely was any time left and when then there was my back which wasn't cooperating and asked me to go away from the pc and rest. I sure have missed you and I hope to make up for this long break by posting lot's of eye candy in this post.

I bought this gorgeous Merry Christmas glitter sign recently from Andrea Singarella over at the Velvet Strawberry blog and I absolutley love the way it sparkles in front of my golden mirror when the candles on my mantle are lit:

The oval golden frame in the next picture was a praliné box with an ugly company ad image in the oval, so I changed the image and pasted some of my Dresden borders on the box and voilà doesn't it look yummy now? I got this box from a supplier of the company I work for and I so have to ask him where he has got it from, so I can make more frames like this one:

Yummy Mercury glass ornaments on a vintage glass plate:

I also like to show you some pictures from my parents Christmassy home, well I would have liked to show you even more pictures that just this few, but Imageshack isn't working properly and wont show all the pictures today.

I'm looking forward to spend Christmas Eve at my parents home which is also the day we exchange our presents during the here so called "Bescherung". It's the first time my daughter will not be with us at Christmas because she is still in Australia but will come home in 5 weeks! :)

Now back to my home:

and studio:

Here are a few of the Christmas pendants I finished recently:

The beautiful sepia, cream and gold colored stocking in the next picture came from Jennifer die Giuseppe a flickr friend for the Vintage Christmas stocking swap:

I'm so happy that I have meanwhile send off all my swaps, it was kind of hard to get it all done during the busy season, so big sigh of relief!

The Christmas bird and Merry Christmas sign in the picture above came as a surprise parcel from my sweet blogging friend Anna aka Nature Girl and has really cheered me up big time! :)

Lastly here is some cranberry crafting I did lately and I think the red berries look very festive:

It is wonderful to know that you are out there patiently waiting for new posts and I look forward to catch up with you and visit all your blogs again during my vacation over the holidays.

Merry Christmas to all my dear readers and blogging friends in the world!

Peace and Hugs

Carol(a) xox

Nature decorations

Hello dear blogging friends and readers I'm glad that you came back to see what's new!

I was at my parents house this afternoon and took photos of my mums seasonal decorations well and I thought maybe some of you would like to see them?

Colorful patio decoration even at this dark time of the year mostly done with natures givings like cones, apples, moss, cyclamen, and branches of vine, dogwood and other bushes and trees:

Birds and Birdouses always a favorite patio decoration (click pictures to enlarge and see more details):



Beautiful cones are decorated inside the house as well:

Don't you just love the wreath of red dogwood branches together with the red cyclamen flowers and big pine cones in the basket?

Red glass ball in a moss nest:

More wreathes from nature materials only:

I'm all inspired now to do my own nature decorations tomorrow. Last Sunday we were in the woods and I have gathered all the necessary nature materials :)

Have a beautiful weekend everyone and hopefully you feel inspired to do some nature decorations as well!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

Paper dresses, silver solder and nature decorations

Welcome back to Boxwood Cottage dear readers and blogging friends! It was a long break again due to a very bad back and hurting shoulder, but since this weekend I feel better, thanks to less PC sessions and more gymnastics instead.

I still solder a lot, just love doing it (click on picture to enlarge and see more details). For example all the six big oval pendants hanging from my iron chandelier above which were a custom order for my talented blogging friend Ginny from http://twinklepinkpostit.blogspot.com/ you must go and see her wonderful Marie-Antoinette Round Robin book!

I love the sparkle of the silver pendant above made with silver gleem solder and pink shiny wings from Andrea's Onehundred Wishes web boutique. Here is wishing dear Andrea all the best for the upcoming birth of her second child!

Further I've got my dresses from Heather's Paper dress garland swap and have decorated them on my mantle. I was so lucky to get beautiful dresses from fellow bloggers like Cerri, Jessi Nagy and Nicole from Small Treasures. Doesn't they look great?

Now I like to show you some nature decoration like this hydrangea and ivy wreath, all freshly picked from my fall garden:

A good friend came to dinner and brought me this limb of tiny apples instead of flowers, they are so gorgeous and a simple nature decoration:

On my deck all the vine leaves are gone by now and once again I can see my decorations underneath:

Here is a close up of a garden still life - click this link: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2099/1794576866_e15a95ab51_o.jpg

to see a bigger version with more details of the next picture!

I'd be glad if this was a little inspiration for you. I'll show you more seasonal decorations in my next post. Have a great start into the new week everyone!

Hugs Carol(a) xox

P.S. Blogger wasn't really cooperating with me, so only one picture is clickable to enlarge, I never get why though.

A good mixture!

Oh my goodness like every time I can't decide what to post on my blog. I'm torn between pictures of my garden, decorations, swaps and crafts. What is it that you like to see best/mostly? Well for this time I decided to make this post a good mixture out of it all lol

Okay so I've started with a decorated corner of my deck in the picture above!

Followed by a photo of a wonderful royal mail parcel that I had in the mail last weekend from Chantal of the blog http://celestinemusings.blogspot.com/

Chantal e- mailed me through flickr that she saw a comment that I made weeks ago under someone elses picture of a book called "The Country diary of an Edwardian Lady" and that she had a spare copy of that book which she'd like to send to me just because she loves my blog and cause she wanted to share it. Wow random act of kindness (RAK) or what? Of course I was delighted and I still am! :D Thank you so much Chantal, you and another kindred soul have made my weekend! I was suffering from a bad migraine and couldn't do much, so your parcel was very soothing for me!

It is such a beautiful nature diary through a whole year with the most enchanting pictures of plants and butterflies etc.pp all hand painted by the author Edith Holden back at the beginning of the last century. Im so happy to have my own copy now! The gorgeous foxglove below is just one example of the prettyness of the pictures, I'll sure post more pictures out of this treasure book from time to time:

See the beautiful metal birds in my fave colors hanging from my blue parasol?

Well they came in another wonderfully lavender smelling parcel last weekend from my dear friend Nature Girl from Canada. We had a magazine swap and the sweet heart that she is she has popped some more goodies in the envelope. I love everything but the birds really make me happy! I so love birds and she just knew it! Thank you so much NG! xox

Click on picture to enlarge and see more details!

Further I like to share with you some pictures of what is blooming in my little garden at the moment:

Above you can see "Lavatera arborea" a real big plant, almost to big for my border, but it has so many beautiful blooms!

Above is Clematis "Cardinal rouge" which is still blooming pretty as well on my blue trellis and my "Augusta Luise" rose in the photo below is still having pretty flowers too:

Then there are the magnificent sweet peas blooming in my border close to the rose arc now:

The collage on canvas below I've made for Jenny's bits and pieces swap. It's going out to my swap partner Anastasia in Sydney this week. If you are interested to see the collages of all the other participants of this swap go have a look at the flickr group here

See a bigger more detailed version of the picture above here!

And I made another crown, or this I think it became a bit more tiara like. My swap partner Ele had the choice between 3 crowns now and has decided she wants the golden King crown I've shown in my last post though. I'll show you pictures of what I'll get from my swap partners when I've received their parcels. There is also a flickr group for this swap of Holly Doodle, see here

See a bigger more detailed version of the picture above here!

Lastly can you spot me in the next picture?

Sure you can lol

Have a fabulous summer time everyone oh and winter time of course for those of you living down under! And leave me some comments please so that I know that you were here! Thank you and see you in July!

Warmest wishes

Carol(a) xox

Allium love and a little photo shot with my antique dress form

Hello dear blogging friends and readers I'm glad you came back to see what's new at Boxwood Cottage! :D

Well last weekend I've had a little photo shot with my vintage German dress form which a dear friend was so nice to give me last year (see post from December 11th 2006 in my archives). She had no more neck, but my dear Dad has made me a new wooden neck that suits her perfectly which you'll see in the next pictures. This is a not so good picture that I took of her back in December 2006, still in my friends home and without neck, that's the way she was awaiting me decorated with some fresh ivy and a pink necklace and a welcome sign:D

I've had her in my bedroom all the time since I brought her home, but somehow I didn't really liked the place for her there, so while my dd was away to Lissabon last Friday I decided to bring her up in my studio corner in our loft room and so I secretly obtained another corner of our loftroom for my studio ;-), by putting some not so decorative things of my dd in another place and placing the dress form in the corner of a wardrobe which belongs to my studio space. Then I began dressing her up a bit. At first she's got this cameo necklace around her neck.

And then I tied some vintage borders and little paper roses (Can you recognise the lovely roses and the pink border you recently gave me for our swap Nicki? Hope you'll get your swap parcel from me this weekend too! And not to forget the vintage crotcheted border which was a gift from my dear friend Corey !) around her waist:

Ulla, Lauren and Nicol will surely recognize the prints of their gorgeous colloborative jewelry work that I pinned on my not so beautiful cheap IKEA wardrobe for inspiration (I so need an antique warderobe for my studio soon!). Wouldn't such a beautiful soldered necklace look wonderful on my dress form? *sigh*

So here she is now in her full beauty and it was a pleasure to have this little photo shot with her:

See her new wooden neck? I think my Dad did a great job making it look old too!

I just loved to decorate her with roses!

Well now I think it's time for a few more pictures from the garden as I promised you in my last post.

One of the first roses to bloom in my garden this season was this David Austin rose "Wenlock" which is growing in a deep, big pot on my patio, she has a very intensive deep pink color:

The pink and white striped Clematis "Nelly Moser" is my first blooming Clematis this season:

These are the last blooms of my pink Wisteria, it's almost faded now:

People who frequently read my blog surely know about my love for Allium blooms. Now it's the time of the year they are beginning to open their gorgeous pink balls. This ball is of my fave Allium The "Globemaster". The ball is still very small in this picture, their blooms are getting really huge as you can see in a picture from last year here.

These are 3 Allium Purple Sensation blooming like a family at the bottom of my rose arc at the moment:

"Lavendula stoechas" is still in full bloom:

Oh and the first peonies are blooming between my blue cat nip plant Nepeta x faassenii "Walkers low":

In the background of this picture you can see two of my three new wicker paravents, the pink blooming plant in the middle is a Thalictrum:

I guess that's enough pictures for today as I know they'll take ages to load for some of you, thank you for being patient!

Have a fabulous weekend everyone! It's a sunny one here after almost two very rainy and windy weeks so I'm off to the garden now!

Hugs Carol xox

P.S.:

Oh btw some of you have asked me about my name lately, it's written and pronounced Carola with an "a" at the end in my language, but I really like being called just Carol! :D

P.P.S:

Would someone of you lovely US readers would be interested in a little one to one magazine swap with me? I'd get you a copy of our most beautiful eye candy magazine Wohnen und Garten if you'd get me the latest issue of your gorgeous new Somerset life magazine! Or you just tell me which magazine you'd wish to get from Germany. I so need a copy of Somerset life and it takes ages until we can get it overhere. I'd be forever thankful to you!