I’ve been living in this house since Dec 5th. During October and part of November my husband lived in a residence hotel in Kensington. We’d found a house to rent in October and my husband had moved into it in November but he’d been sleeping on an air mattress.

So when I got here one of my first jobs was to get us a bed. My other job was to get us ready to host 5 more people during the holidays. My other, other job was of course to get our dog, Leo adjusted to his new life.

As of this writing we still don’t have a date for when our furniture is arriving from America. So all the furniture save our bed and the air mattress are loaners. We have loaner beds in our guest rooms and a loaner sofa and arm chairs in our reception room. We have a TV courtesy of our cousins. We have many of our kitchen goods because I mailed the items to England from America and my husband brought some things like coffee cups and plates in his checked luggage when he flew here. But when I got here besides having no bed we had no Christmas tree, no bed linen for our guest beds, and no food planned for the holidays. I also didn’t know how to operate the equipment in my kitchen. But that is discussed here and here.

I knew I wanted a tree and I wanted it to be decorated. Shortly after I got here, my husband had to travel for a week, so Leo and I spent a week alone together in our new house. I spent a lot of that time ordering household goods on the internet and waiting for the deliveries to our house because I do not have a vehicle here.

I got the tree from a company called Argos. They have a catalog and an online store and a bricks and mortal store to visit but you can’t really shop in the store, it’s more of a warehouse with a storefront. If you go to the Argos store (I went to one in Alperton) there are computer kiosks and catalogs where you order what you want, then go to the cashier to pay for and pick up what you have just ordered. I ordered several things like brooms, extra plates, and a vacuum cleaner from Argos online and they delivered it but for some reason they wouldn’t deliver the tree.

So I took the Underground to Alperton and walked the mile to the Argos from the station, picked up my tree and carried it back to the station and then walked it home from the Ickenham station. It wasn’t heavy but it was a bit awkward, but I got the tree.

I didn’t bring any Christmas decorations with me to England save one little bird that a friend had given me last year. I brought the bird over in my carry-on.

So I decided to make some more decorations for the tree. My husband and I had a great deal of old street and road maps and I decided to bring them with me to make decorations with them and use them as wrapping paper for presents. Here one of the kinds of decorations I made out of old maps.

It’s made out of eight paper circles cut from a map. I used a plastic bottle cap (I think) to make the original template for the circles.

I folded the 8 circles into triangles and then used a glue stick to attach 4 circles into a sort of “half ball”.

I make two of these half circles and thread a loop made of string or twine through the top of one of the half circles.

Take the two half balls and use the glue stick to attach them together.

I made a number of them and hung them on the tree. I also made two balls created in a similar way but created out of twenty small circles. These balls were too big for the tree and took too much effort to create. I also had some little bags made out of maps and twine. I put chocolates in the little bags. I found the little angel at a 95p store. Here is our tree in the light and in the dark. I have some presents under the tree also wrapped in “mapping paper”.

I got the templates for the paper bags and the idea for the Christmas ornaments off of two different web sites but I can’t find the links right now. I’d like to give them credit so when I find the links I will edit the posts and give credit.