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Our top 5 tips for Christmas styling!

16/12/2019

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1. Bring the outside in. Its not just about bringing a tree in, but think about increasing the amount of real greenery in your home. Consider adding a garland on your fireplace or stairs. Use foraged greens such as ivy, holly and conifers and hang dehydrated oranges, dried pomegranates and pine cones to add detail and interest. If you are ambitious enough why not try a suspended garland aka a flower cloud?
2. Layer it up. Make sure you create extra cosiness with beautiful throws and blankets around the house. Consider adding window treatments or upgrading to thicker curtains to really create that snugly feel. If you want an eclectic look consider layering rugs (especially useful if your rugs are slightly undersized or if you have awkwardly shaped spaces) to cut out any draughts and keep it toasty underfoot.
3. Lower the lighting. With longer darker hours remember to increase the number of lights but keep them dimmed and muted, or at low levels. I suggest having at minimum of 3-5 sight sources in a room including lamps, candles and fairy lights. These create a truly magical ambience and help you cosy up this season. 
green living room and a Christmas tree with fairlyights
4. Consider all the senses. Keep the whole experience of your space memorable and festive. Light some festively gorgeous candles. My current favourite is WYNTER by AHLT, I have received so many compliments from it. Plonk it on the mantle and even unlit - the room smells of Christmas with sweet orange, spicy cinnamon and spicy clove. 
5. Keep it simple. I keep my wrapping super simple and super effective. Brown paper wrapping, silk ribbon and a sprig of holly or pine and you are done. Cheap, cheerful and recyclable - especially if you use plastic free tape! 
brown paper packaging with ribbon and green sprigs
holly sprig with brown paper Christmas presents
greenery and eco wrapping
fairy lights down a circular staircase
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Christmas Garland with Housing Units

6/12/2018

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HELLO DECEMBER!

Hope your Christmas is all ablaze with love and sparkle. I want to speak to you all about a lovely project I have recently done with Housing Units. For those of you who don't know about them, they are based in North Manchester and have a massive interiors emporium so if you have time to have a good old wander about swing by! If you don't live close by they also have an online page where you can order! Perfect for everyone!

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I was invited to their Christmas launch (Blog here) and I was so utterly impressed and surprised by their products that I wanted to create an epic garland for the front door. We were so so pleased with our brand spanking new front door in its bright yellow that I wanted to create something pretty wow to frame it and really make a grand welcome for all our guests over the Christmas season. Did I mention we are hosting a Fake Christmas Dinner for 16 this weekend?!!! Anyway - slow, deep breaths required! Back to the garland, so above here is a little snap of the door pre-chrismassification (yes that is a word). So to create the garland this is what I did! I also created a stories collection (aka Highlight) on my Instagram so if you prefer a video then head here.
  1. Measure! I measured up the door across the top and down the sides, I was shocked to discover that to get a garland most of the way round I needed around 18ft of base garland!!
  2. Take a trip to Housing Units and spend a few hours perusing their gorgeous Christmas decoration section and nail down what kind of detail you want to go for. I am a classic kind of boy when it comes to Christmas so I am all about the green, red and gold! Oooh and lights!! SO important to have lights! Obviously December is the darkest month of the year so add a bit of sparkle with fairy lights.
  3. Plan your garland. So when the delivered box arrived, I squealed with glee and anticipation for the actual construction, but I must say I had not been 100% sure how to construct it. My rough plan was green, lots of berries and some gold with sparkle and lights. I wanted a balanced look through the garland so make sure to get enough to spread across.... I didn't so Ill tell you what I did.
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    4. Lay out the main garland on the floor (didn't have enough table space for 18 ft!) and tie it up at the centre (the garlands have metal wire at the end that  you can just loop around each other). Also open up all the flattened branches so give it as much volume as possible.
   5.  Attach the lights! I used these cluster lights that are really smart as they go on for 8 hrs and off for 16 hrs automatically! isn't that genius! Also I chose a cluster light as it has more LED bulbs per length than traditional fairy lights and this will give more of a glow when lit. I think its really important to put the lights on before any decoration as the last thing you want to see is the black wire above your pretty decorations. The way I attached them was basically just winding the lights around the garland, and also using the branches as stays (they have wire in them)
  
 6. I then laid the berry garlands on top of the green and  tried to make sure they are as centred as possible, so if you have any lengths of bare green garland, these are at the edges and equal in length (Approximately). I then attached the berries to the main garland again winding the branches around each other to get them to stay how I wanted and I also kept the lights on at this stage so that I can appreciate where the lights were in relation to the foliage and berries, also it looked pretty and motivated me!
  7. Next step was applying the sparkle, as I didn't have enough length of the gold sparkle fronds (not sure if that is the correct term to describe them) I took each one apart by unwrapping the ribbon around the wire frame and basically pulling each separate frond apart, this left me with two piles of different sized fronds (and a lot of glitter). I then went around fitting the individual sparkly fronds onto the garland in a relatively balanced way. Again each one has a metal wire backbone so relatively easy to wind around and attach to the garland. This created a really bespoke and expensive looking garland for a fraction of the cost!
  8. Hang it! So this all depends on what type of house you have but we have crazy hard bricks in this house so a while with my percussion drill and some heavy duty screw eyes gave me the sturdy base to hang the garland off with some extra wire. Plug it in and enjoy the visual feast! Et Voila! you are done!
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As always pleas let me know what you think and comment below! xoxo
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Christmas at Housing units!

6/9/2018

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Yesterday evening I was very happy to be invited to Housing Units, the mega furniture store in the North West. A bunch of local bloggers and online influences were invited after shop opening hours to the emporium for a private tour of one of their showrooms (Did you know they had three separate buildings on the same site with goodies?) and to have a sneaky peak at their fabulous Christmas world. Initially I was thinking this was quite early for a shop to have their festive launch, but apparently Selfridges opened theirs in AUGUST!!!
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We had a tour around the massive store when it was closed to the public (quite eerie and surreal) and saw some lovely pieces (pictured above) which are on sale at the moment! And if you want an extra 10% off till Monday, you can enter the coupon code "Exclusive10"  at your online check out for an extra 10% off!. This is the lowest price you will ever be able to get off at Housing Units so head to their website for a nosy! Here are some of my favourites from their website!
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We then moved onto their main event! The Christmas zone! We were escorted through a secret back door into this marvellous world of sparkle and magic! A massive variety of Christmas decorations lay ahead of us. More than anyone could ever wish for when creating that special Christmas look! Trees, wreathes, garlands, a million different types of baubles and tree decorations,  light and lasers and  even a selfie booth nearby some talking Reindeer!! Words cant really do this justice so have a look below at the snaps!
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As you can tell, I have a secret area of my heart that is reserved for some Christmas Sparkle! There is such an array of decorations, ranging from the classic to the modern and veering off into the odd and quite bizzare. All of which can be curated to create a fabulous look! Look at that wicked unicorn tree!!! Who would have thought! Do you think I could sneak that into the house without Sam noticing?

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 So if this post has made you feel festive, head on down to Housing Units in North Manchester or have a look at their website (remember to use the coupon code), and have a jolly good time! The Christmas zone is open to the public from today and the sale is on NOW!

Is it too early for me to put up my tree? NO? didnt think so!

This is NOT an AD, all work and photos are my own unless otherwise specified.
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Peter Grech in Altrincham, Cheshire, UK on Houzz
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Peter Grech in Altrincham, Cheshire, UK on Houzz
Peter Grech in Altrincham, Cheshire, UK on Houzz
Award winning Interior Design  & Styling -  Cheshire, UK
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  • Home
  • Portfolio
    • Heath House, Alsager, Cheshire
    • Casacoppa, Liverpool
    • Worldly Loft, Ancoats, Manchester
    • Space to grow, Wimbledon, London
    • Modern Victoriana - Altrincham, Cheshire
    • Georgian Townhouse, Cheshire
    • Modernist Mid-century, Malta
    • Playful apartment - Honour Oak, London
    • Classic in white - Sale, Manchester
    • Softened industrial bathroom
  • About
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