12 December 2013

Welcome to the new section of our blog!!

Right now its called ‘Ramblings’ as, I am sure, that if you have read ANY of my blogs, you know how I can ramble on and on…and on…and on…so I thought I’d give myself the freedom to talk to you outside of the realm of the order of the 2people1life  wild wedding adventure blog.

The name MAY change but the content will remain the same.

Here you will find ALL the things that are important to us and that we just feel we would like to share with you! Things like cooking, eating, wine drinking, exercising, life on the road, hanging out with friends, making things, recommending products or services, asking your advice or just having a good old chat!

We would also love to hear what you WANT to read about here so leave us some suggestions and we will see what we can do!

As we work behind real time on the blog I find myself being so damn excited about something but by the time it comes to launching it, the time has passed, JUST like Christmas! By the time I am launching the blogs of what we are up to right now it could be Febuary!

BUT I LOVE Christmas and I am SO excited for this year so I wanted to share our Christmas with you, right now, while it is Christmas, and we hope you will share yours with us too!!

Right now we are in Turkey, Gocek and are having some ‘down time’. By down time we mean that we are staying in one place for a length of time which is the first time since we left England in 2011.

We are here for 2 months and have given ourselves a routine!!! We are working 9-5 Monday to Friday on the blog and some big ideas we have for the future and on the weekends we are relaxing, exploring the area, cooking and eating and watching movies! It is BLISS!

We are also going to be here for Christmas, which means I get to decorate…and I Love to decorate which I think has been aggravated by living in a van for 30 months and having absolutely NOTHING to make pretty!

Obviously we have a very small budget and we need to keep it as cheap as possible, so I wanted to share with you, how we are ‘MAKING’ Christmas!

As we are in Turkey and 50% of the population don’t celebrate the holiday at all, there is very little in the shops in the way of festive decor. So we had to get creative! If you want to make Christmas along with us, you will need –

Something to decorate – maybe a Christmas tree, a house plant or like us, a branch trimmed off another tree! Things you need to buy.

A can of spray paint in your choice of colour, mine is silver.

A bag of popping corn

A bag of whole dried red chillies

A spool of needle and cotton any colour

A bag of flour

A bag of cheap salt

All of this should cost less than $10.

You will also need–

A lack of fear of looking stupid collecting stuff off the streets.

A collection of ‘bits and bobs’ to find bits of ribbon, some colours and maybe some sparkles.

A few old decorations from Christmases past.

Festive music to play in the background and if you can get it a glass of mulled wine!

When it came to us finding a tree to decorate we were lucky! The gardens around the property that we are in are AMAZING and filled with Olive trees, bougainvillea, lavender and pine trees and last week, the gardeners came in with their hard hats on, armed with chainsaws and chopped the heck out of the gardens to trim them right back. This excited me a LOT!

I waited for nightfall, got dressed in my dark clothing and snuck out into the pile of chopped down trees and pulled out piles and piles of olive tree branches. I dragged them back to the house and selected my favourite one and Alex helped me stick it in an empty box drawer and jammed it upright with cushions and clothing.

We preened it a little and made it beautiful and dragged it, stood in its box into a corner!

The next step was to find something to hang on the thing to make it look more Christmas than garden centre. I went out with a carrier bag and left my pride at the door. I stooped and collected dropped pine-cones, twigs, leaves, any old iron that looked like it could be made to look ‘Christmassy’.

Excited with my find, I came back to the house and emptied my swag onto the living room floor…and watched the inhabitants of my find flee in all directions.

Which meant that the next step was to get the hoover out and suck them all up, so my suggestion would be to empty that stuff outside and let its live in creatures move out before you begin sparkling it up.

My best find was these cute spiky ball type seed pods that are in clusters and will look GREAT sprayed silver and draped on the tree or in a big bowl somewhere.

I picked up a can of silver spray paint and sprayed the be-shizzle out of everything and left it to dry.

Once dry I threw it all in a big tray and added a few colourful bits and pieces and Viola! My next step was to make me some stars for my tree.

Stars are my favourite thing and I need them anywhere I can get them. I figured the best and cheapest way to make these would be with salt dough.

To do this –

Sling two cups of flour and one cup of salt into a bowl and gradually add water until the mixture becomes the consistency of play-dough.

Roll it out with a rolling pin / an empty wine bottle / a roll of cling film.

Cut out your shapes (my stars look a little like starfish but they’ll do) or get your kids to do it.

Poke holes in them somewhere to thread ribbon through to hang them.

Bake in the oven on 100 F for 2-3 hours or until dried out and hard.

Spray these too if you like or paint them different colours (I used nail varnish to colour mine), thread some ribbon through the holes and hang them on your tree. Next I popped a bag of corn and with a glass of wine and a Christmas movie on in the background (Home Alone, Naturally) I threaded piece by piece of popcorn onto a long piece of cotton and every now and then added a dried red chilli for a splash of colour.

We picked up some cheap ass lights (which I was very impressed with in their OCD packaging, all red lights on one side, all blues on the other), threw it all at the tree (with some cute little glass baubles I have from last year) and hey presto.

Chrimbo for under a tenner! We would love to see your home-made Christmas and would be over the moon with any hints and tips on home-made decorations!

We would also love to know what you would like us to write about now that we have a bit more freedom!

Leave us some comments or suggestions and we will see what we can do!

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and all the very best for 2014, we hope you will continue to join us on our adventures!