The major fun part of Christmas is the emotional blackmail you can bestow on friends you haven't seen for a while, when you throw a last minute party and force them to come over... I jest, sort of. After the burglary we decided we wanted to create some happier memories in the flat so threw together some food on our fancy new crockery and put the cheesy tunes on loud.

Hope you don't mind that I didn't do that many pictures of the party itself (thats what too many glasses of Chandon does to you) but I did manage to capture some of our latest La Redoute acquisitions. I have wanted to have a proper crockery set for ages, or at least more than 4 of the same plates and when I saw these I knew I had to have them.  I swiftly bought the large plates here, small plates here, small bowls (amazing for dips at parties as well as limiting the amount of ice cream you can eat), larger bowls (for no-limits Haagan Dazs sessions).

I also smuggled in a marble platter for the cheese (which we use as a candle stand when we've eaten all the forage), a fancy pants gold tray here which we keep permanently on the end of the sofa now as a bit of a feature, and some new pretty candle holders in a star shape and ones dipped in gold leaf here. Gus didn't even moan when they arrived, they're boy-friendly (I get told off when anything new arrives at home now, we're seriously running low on space).

La Redoute has been there interiors find of 2016 for us. When I was first told about it, I passed it off as just a mail order clothing catalogue for the French... Then I saw a few furniture pieces from them and completely changed my mind. When we moved into the flat we essentially got everything from there, from the wardrobe rail to the table... 

We were very stubborn about not wanting anything from Ikea in our new home; we wanted to feel like we were progressing. La Redoute's stuff is a cut above the Swede's offering, without spending a fortune (and there is usually an additional offer on, at the moment you can get an extra 30% off homeware with the code HOME30).

On top the more important stuff = our party. Considering we arranged it a week before and it was the weekend before Christmas, lots of our favourite people came to say hello. Some swiftly ate the mince pies, others stayed till the small hours playing Cards Against Humanity and letting Gus play mixologist (don't ever let him do this unless you want to be motionless for 48 hours afterwards).

Most importantly the plan worked, we're back to loving our home.