The Aforementioned penultimate Christmas Tour post of '08

Here we are with Boomama's Annual Christmas House Tour about to start,** and I'm only up to posting photos as far as the kitchen. I DID try to time it so that we would have the glorious finish on the day of the tour but, y'know, best laid plans and all that.
As with last year I'm just posting the one room and giving you the links to the rest if you're so inclined. it just isn't the room I was aiming for.

Apologies to all concerned but if you really want to see the main event aka the rumpus room which I haven't posted yet[ without having to come back tomorrow that is] then you'll just have to go and check last year's post on the subject. Of course there are subtle changes this year, there are always some changes but the essence is the same

Edited to add: the rumpus room post is now here
and I've found two other house tours going on
Kimber's is here
and Hooked on Holidays House Tour is here
this could take all year !!

Anyway
have some Christmas Pudding and welcome to the heart of my home which is, of course, the kitchen ... the place where friends and family always seem to congregate around my big pine table
... this is where all the snowmen hang out and try to beat the Aussie summer heat [ not that we're having any of that just at the moment ]

There's a small quilt here too - of course - one that I designed for one of the Aussie patchwork magazines a few years back.
I think that the naive style partners well with the rustic tree which is a 4 footer and is mainly decorated with miniature wooden and china ornaments, teeny kitchen related things, spoons, cookie cutters and candy canes.
I did toy with the idea of lots of torn plaid or gingham bows on the tree but that kinda didn't happen.

These little guys are sitting on a vintage handmade wooden suitcase that Marc and I found at a garage sale many, many years ago. It has wonderful old stickers from the many ocean voyages it went on from about 1910 right up until the late 60s. Where would you ever find another quite the same ?
All the teas and coffees get swapped into festive tins, and that tiny one at the front ? That has my sweeteners in it.

Some of my blue scandinavian Christmas plates
and some more - The kitchen is the only room in the house that is allowed to have blue Christmas stuff in it. ... and don't get me wrong, I LOVE blue, it's my favourite colour ... just not at Christmas.
Mmmm what else ? Well, there are swags of fake evergreen and cranberries garlanding the old ladder that hangs over my kitchen bench and currently there are 13 crocheted stars and snowflakes suspended from it ... There are another 7 hanging in the window, and the windowsill has its own collection of folk art trees-and-candles by Maz and some more snowmen, but I can't seem to get a decent photo of them without backlighting from outside.

This laminated version of the classic poem "The Night Before Christmas" was a card given to me 55 years ago - I was a week old at the time - and it has been put up every year thereafter. My parents were stony broke in the early years of their marriage, as I've no doubt mentioned before, and so the only decorations were ratty, stringy, pathetic bits of tinsel , those accordion-style tissuepaper bells and lanterns that everyone had back then, a spindly tree, recycled cards and framed pages from the Reader's Digest... pretty tacky and awful but the upshot is that I still have wonderful treasures like this [ and the little paper nativity that I showed you last week ] that might have been thrown away had mum and dad been a bit more affluent.

as for the rest of the house:
bedrooms are here
bathroom here
big room here
and here
and here
my bedroom here

and that should about do you
until tomorrow

** and of course in the time that it's taken me to write this post and to get all these photos up here, the House Tour has already started and I'm 80 odd on the list!
Let the visitin' commence.