Inspiration

It is nigh on impossible to not feel festive when in the company of twinkling fairy lights. In the kitchen, they work a charm if you have exposed oak shelving that a pine garland can rest along with lights woven in amongst the fir bristles, but the light show needn’t stop there. Is yours a kitchen with pantry jars on display? Why not decant your dried pasta or pulses and then stash inside a cluster of strand lights. Or if you want to keep everything in order and as it was, invite a few newcomers like our glass Belmont jars, and fill one with festive treats like mini mince pies or gingerbread biscuits and the other with lights – just choose battery powered so there’s no plug socket required.

Just like fairy lights, the next form of light that never fails to create a feeling of enchantment are candles. But Christmas is the season of generosity, so don’t hold back on the number that you use – candlelight is one of those exceptions to the rule where less isn’t necessarily more.

Take them to the window ledge and use candlestick holders as well as tea light cups so there's a pleasing mix of textures and height of flame. And because it’s Christmas, go all out with coloured wax like our Coleridge dinner candles that are fittingly Olive-coloured. Teamed with our Heddon brass candlestick holders, they’re a match made in festive heaven.

Who doesn’t appreciate a wreath that greets you as you walk on up to the front door? It seems a shame then to only enjoy that moment on the one or two occasions a day when you might head on home.

Out of all of the rooms in the home, the kitchen is the one that surely has the most cabinets and cupboard doors with handles aplenty – ripe for hanging bits and bobs from. Rest one from the handles of a double-doored countertop cabinet, like a bi-fold larder (a favourite of ours), or, if you’re the sort who doesn’t want the festivities getting in the way, you could always lean it up inside a cabinet’s interior as a happy surprise every time you open its doors wide.

Christmas decorating, ornaments and all, is done best when it appeals to all the senses. So welcome smell and taste to the party by having ingredients out on display to delicately scent your kitchen with the aromas of the season. A decorative bowl with clove-punctured clementines, a decorative jar filled with star anise and cinnamon sticks whose lid is left off for an hour here or there so that its notes can dance around the room, or better still, get hands on and make the most of those kitchen work surfaces by baking to your heart’s content. Is there a better scent in December than walking into the kitchen to detect gingerbread baking away? Cut yours into festive shapes and then string them up from ribbons in your kitchen’s window or hang them from spindly branches in a vase for a suitably culinary display.