Today’s Guest Poster is the always gregarious Linda from Lilly Cottage. . . famously known as Lilly Linda.
For a great many years Lilly Linda has been the owner of the most gorgeous little shop ~ Lilly Cottage at Old Petrie Town on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. This year she opened a second Lilly Cottage on Bribie Island, where she lives with her husband and 3 children. Linda sews, paints and creates a great number of different crafts. . . all while battling MS. . . she is an inspiration to us all. You can visit Linda’s blog here for all the shop details, or pop in and say ‘hi’ to her on Facebook. . . she has a plethora of pretty vintage/shabby eye candy to show you.
Won’t you come a carolling with me??? Bring back Christmas carolling I say...well it probably never went anywhere in some parts of the world. . . so perhaps I should say. . . lets start Christmas Carolling!
I love to sing and what better time to be allowed to sing than Christmas. . . you can sing along in the department stores from about August just to get into practice and then by the time you are playing Michael Buble Christmas album in the car, you are in key and ready to go.
For years when at high school and then when house sharing with my two oldest friends, I would try and coerce them into singing Christmas carols as we walked along the streets. . . hmmm never had a lot of luck with that one, I could get them to sing along with me. . . as we drank champagne decorating the Christmas tree. . . as we drank champagne wrapping the presents (you might recall my fondest for champagne in my Simply Christmas guest post last year). . . there was always a lot of Christmas carolling then, but no street walking singing was to be had. . . I could get them to sing joyfully and loudly as we drove around the streets looking at the Christmas lights (could have been a little champagne then too...for us passengers..or tour goers. . . not the ever dutiful darling husband driver) and the one or two years we had a mini bus with a sun roof that opened right up to allow fantastic Christmas lights and firework viewing if you stood up, was the closest I ever got to traipsing the streets singing. . .
So what is the next best thing to walking in a large group singing Christmas Carols? I am thinking it surely has to be joining a large group of people in the middle of a field, plonking your bottom on the grass, trying to light a candle with its flimsy little anti wax dripping bit of paper and singing your heart out at Carols by Candlelight!! Oh they were fun, even with mosquitoes. . . the smell of the Aeroguard mixed with smoke from the cheap candles somehow set the scene perfectly. I loved the fact that sometimes you were handed sheets with the words to all the carols written on them, or sometimes you brought the print out from the local paper but no matter whether you had the words in front of you or not, there were some carols that everyone knew the words to and the night would fill with one voice. . . lucky sometimes it wasn’t the one voice of the lady who always sat behind you that even though she was a trooper joining in the carolling fun, she obviously hadn’t been practicing too much and was singing in a key all of her own.
Of course my favourite Christmas carol is a tricky one and not everyone knows the words to it, but I do and I love it and will sing it for anyone on any given opportunity. . . . my favourite. . . . Good King Wenceslas of course.
These days however, the candles are battery operated mostly and there is always some sort of glow stick that has to be purchased by the youngest members of the family, along with a sausage sizzle from the queue a mile long. Three things remain the same however, the community spirit, the lusty singing of favourite Christmas carols and the really hard and sometimes damp ground that we plonk our bottoms on. . . . this my lovelies leads me to my tutorial. . . . How to make a Sit-upon. Now those of your who were in the Brownies or Scouts (no prejudice here) may well be familiar with them...something a little bit more comfortable to sit your bottom upon for such events as Christmas Carols by Candlelight or songs around the campfire (can you tell I wasn’t a Brownie).
There are tales of making these out of newspapers and the like but of course we are going a little bit more upmarket and making ours from oilcloth and a foam seat pad....which I have done and have photographed but it will be 2020 by the time I make sense of my photos and it would be a 10 page tutorial so instead I am going to send you to some links to make a basic situpon. . .
[Click photos for links]
This is also a great site to read about the oh so many creative ways to make a situpon. . . love the old jeans too.
Have fun making your own situpon. . . . and have a dry and comfy tush next time you go a carolling.
Merry Christmas and Kiss Noises, Linda (Lilly Cottage)