Christmas Week

This time of year is a time for reflection, enjoying family and friends and thinking about achievements, what we can do better to improve ourselves and preparing for another year.

For me starting my own business has been the most rewarding thing I have ever done (apart from having my three beautiful daughters of course!).

Creating a dream and making it a reality is the most satisfying feeling and I am so passionate about what I do that working is enjoyable for me, it does not feel like work, it is a hobby and a lifestyle, which I think is hugely important to create a successful business as you eat, live, breath and sleep it!

Everyone has a story and mine is no different and I did lose faith in having friends, but what I have realised over the past year in particular, is the lifestyle I have created for myself has introduced me to some wonderful people, and now I realise I have created a network of friends that I value enormously.

I thought I would share some of my days with you now to see what we get up to when we are not busy creating our wonderful weddings and parties.

Today I spent a morning surfing some fabulous blogs, gaining inspirations and ideas for next year's weddings. I then popped down to the shop this afternoon to see Loraine and Anoulka so I decided to take my camera with me and take some photos. Here are some photos of the shop in it's full Christmas glory and Loraine and Anoulka working hard creating fabulous Christmas bouquets, arrangements and decorations, I am the lazy one sitting on a chair with a coffee :)

I have also taken a photo below of my beautiful Christmas chocolate cake delivered to me a few days ago by Fi, our crazy and hugely talented cake maker, she has created a birdcage for me which I love and don't really want to eat but I will succumb shortly!

I then popped round to see Heather, the owner of Fiestasol, for a cup of tea and homemade biscuits at her lovely cosy home as she was housebound with her beautifully cuddly children and I wanted to deliver a Christmas card and also took her a lovely festive bouquet from the shop for her to enjoy.

Sometimes a working mum's life can be hard so I always think that the mum's need to be spoilt for once! Although of course Heather is very lucky to be married to a superb chef who has taken over the kitchen for Christmas with huge enthusiasm whilst I am still checking off my to do shopping lists!!

All I can say is if anyone out there is considering starting up their own business, just go for it, you have to be passionate about what you do and be prepared to work hours that no one else would even consider but it is so rewarding to create a lifestyle and meet hugely talented and interesting people that otherwise you would never have crossed paths with.

Christmas Table Inspirations

I am having yet another lazy morning spent surfing the wonderful blogs I subscribe to and squeaked with delight when I came across this wonderful Christmas table top shoot on the City Sage Blog.

Created by Kelly Oshiro Design, this table top is so simple and yet beautifully done with soda pop bottles, red and white paper straws (which I am going to have to buy as they remind me of when I was a child), the humble carnation and baubles which catch the candlelight.

Both these delightful blogs are well worth a visit to be transported into a wonderful world of decor and design.

If you have decorated your tree and house but not thought about your table decorations I hope this inspires you to be creative, mine is going to be silvers with hints of magenta this year and I bought the most fabulously glittery table runner!

Winter Wedding Inspiration Board

Top left to right Earrings Centrepiece Bouquet Winter Cape

Middle left to right Falling Snow Table Decorations Snow Bride Falling Snow

Bottom left to right Image Bouquet Bouquet Snow Queen

I am sitting here on this very dark morning with a raging storm and torrential rain overhead, so I have engrossed myself in creating a lovely wintery wedding board instead of looking out at a very gloomy day!

So here I am with my steaming coffee, all my Christmas lights twinkling and creating beautiful images for everyone to enjoy as we approach the big day :)

Which does remind me, I have an awful lot of wrapping to do today for a certain little person in my house!

To see the credits for the above inspiration board click on the descriptions

Cranberry Inspired Christmas Decorations

A morning of Christmas inspirations today and you must head over to Elizabeth Anne Designs to see this beautiful cranberry inspired decoration with a how to tutorial as well.

A rich colour scheme with an olive, deep reds and golds, with a beautiful centrepiece and table setting, plus ideas for making sweet displays and beautifully wrapped presents.

Which reminds me I still have a lot of present wrapping to do!

A White Shabby Chic Christmas

I always love the white shabby chic style and here are some inspiring images found at Country Living for creating a white and silver Christmas with some very pretty ideas. Sadly in my house, nothing would stay pristine for longer than an hour with dogs, cats and kiddies, so this is a scheme I have to avoid, although there are elements of this and one of my daughter's bedroom is very Cath Kidston with white furniture!

I am in love with the bedroom though, one of my favourite colours is a soft pale grey, in fact there are many inspirations on this wonderful website for decorating it is definitely worth dropping by.

A bit of Festive Fun continued

As our festive fun continues this week, we are delighted to receive these photos of Claire's fabulous gold and red Christmas tree.

A glorious festive, twinkling tree filled with with lots of lovely details from the gold reindeers, a personalised bauble I spotted and cute snowmen and gold angels. I love it and it is so glittery with the traditional rich deep reds and glorious golds.

Big thank you to Claire and it does look like there are some rather large pressies under the tree which is exciting, only 5 more sleeps!!!

Christmas Table Inspirations

A lazy Sunday morning spent surfing creative blogs has again bought me to so many hugely talented and creative people, who like me, love designing spaces, details and decorating.

This morning I was looking for festive inspiration and also midsummer night themes for weddings and I stumbled upon Hostess with the Mostess and found this lovely clean and fresh table setting using flashes of reds, white twigs and succulent plants. I particuarly loved the 'chandelier' using bleached branches and hanging lapiz shells, a lovely idea for a beach wedding as well.

Another idea we use is to wrap the containers with diamante, normally we buy cheap cosutme jewellery bracelets from a warehouse here in Malaga and use them to wrap around glassware and another fabulous idea which is also beautiful for table decoration is to use them as napkin rings, you can never beat a bit of glitter and sparkle at anytime of year, but at Christmas the more the merrier!

A Bit of Festive Fun

The much coveted Christmas tree :)

I just love this time of year and spend hours and days decorating my house, digging out my Nigella Lawson and Delia Christmas cook books, and generally preparing for this magical time of year with shopping, cooking and lists coming out my ears!

I adore dressing my Christmas tree which can take as long as a week

as I go back to it all the time! I have taken some photos as it is now, by the time we get to Christmas I will take some more as it will be laden around the bottom with pressies :)

I confess, having had many years of bringing up children and not much time to clear up, is I have a false tree, probably purchased about 15 years ago now, which is rather scary, I would love a real tree, but it would annoy me if it was not symmetrical and I cannot bear the needles, plus I have it up for too long!

However, I offset this with buying lots of blue pine to decorate my sideboards, tops of bookcases and anywhere really I can put it to get that wonderful Christmas smell of pine in my home.

What I love about my tree is the fact there is a very retro collection of ornaments dating back some 25 years, things I have bought pre daughters, ornaments bought every year for the girls, ornaments bought for me by me from Harrods :), I have also been collecting handbags, shoes and cupcake ornaments for years and everything is thrown on with a great vengeance every year! I love it :) Even some of the ribbons on my tree are dare I say it, vintage, they are over 25 years old, snagged from Sandersons when I was assistant display manager, and are carefully ironed every year, how sad is this! I actually wanted olive and magenta velvet bows this year but ran out of time to order any ribbons so have made do yet again!

After much gently nagging from my friends, my brides and work colleagues I have decided to host a bit of festive fun for all us creative individuals who want to show off their decoration skills over the festive season.

Many of my girlfriends revel in decorating their Christmas trees, including me, so we have decided to all post our Christmas decoration photos on the Reviva Weddings Facebook page for a bit of fun, to share our trees and wallow excitedly in our decorating glory together.

We would love to see your photos of your festive creations, trees, decorations so in order to get them posted on our facebook page, tag me Laura Charles on your photo, or send your photos to info@reviva-weddings.com and we will post them to our Facebook page so we can all twitter excitedly together about glitter, shiny ornaments, handmade goodies and perhaps even a Pagan Christmas as one of my male friends has stated he will have this year!

Snowglobe Love

I definitely now have gone to heaven, adore these snowglobes, definitely a must for next year :)

Even more fab winter wedding inspirations!

A fabulous winter wedding board found on Grey Likes Weddings, I love the baby Christmas tree.

Beautiful Winter Wedding

I adore this time of year with so many decorations and found this fabulous winter wedding on Elizabeth Anne Designs, to see more details and the hugely talented list of suppliers involved in creating this wedding visit the blog.

The centrepieces were created with white cabbage florets, snowflake mums, white roses, gold pine cones and twigs. There are so many fabulous details from the Christmas ornament guest book to the snow white winter wedding cake.

My Christmas Wish List!

Ok so here is my Christmas wish list!

Having gone horrendously silver and white this year, not only with Christmas but my house, all walls were painted white in October, silver reigns supreme now on my tree and decorations (snowflakes being the theme), but I would love to have a front door covered in snow, these fabulous stockings found on Not on the High Street and of course a new fab silver (or pink not fussy!) leather bound diary for next year :) I fear I will be ordering one myself after Christmas!

Christmas Weddings

It is difficult at the moment with all this rain in Spain to be creative, I feel like (and have been) flopping out on the sofa with my little Twinkle toes (3 year old!), painting, glittering, reading my magazines and making teddy bear beds!

However, having decided to try to gain some creativity tonight, I came across these lovely images from Misty Dawn Photo, evoking a huge sense of fun and festivity for a Christmas themed wedding. Absolutely adore the gingerbread bride and groom and all the lovely details from the candy canes used as table seating indicators to the seasonal table names. I can only imagine what the table names were, Santa, Rudolph, etc. A hugely fun time to have a wedding with all the wonderful themes you could conjour up for a Christmas wedding or party.

I might get round to the Rocky Road cakes tomorrow courtesy of my Nigella cookbook!