CASSANDRA ELLIS
An imperfect, yet perfect, Christmas is the best of all worlds says our decorating writer
For me, Christmas is mostly about love and beauty at home. We welcome people into our space, to share our table, food and conversation. That is the simplicity of it. The complex part arrives when we layer on the need for our homes to be ‘perfect’.
Last Christmas we had just moved into our new home. Although there’s a beautiful house hiding under its current decorative state, then it was only ‘just’ liveable. Moving our lives from one city to another the week before Christmas was quite foolish, but that was our window. So we were packing boxes while watching other people prepare for festivities.
We managed to tear up the carpets moments before the delivery van arrived. ‘That enormous cupboard needs to go against that wall,’ we said. It didn’t. It went on the other wall, which meant our living room was very badly laid out for festive ‘fun’. Christmas last year reminded me of my student houses, just with worse bathrooms, but oddly full of students.
We managed to grab the last tree on Christmas Eve, and we had (cleverly) labelled the box of decorations – so a beautiful tree was had, albeit in the wrong place. We also found napkins and special glasses so it was already better than I thought it could be. A deep clean and foliage gave us awhiff of what you would see in a magazine.
We made beds and plumped the cushions we could find. Art leant against walls, instead of being hung. We queued at food stores because t
