Product Description

Discover a simpler, greener Christmas with hand-crafted gifts and cards, natural decorations and traditional recipes Escape the modern-day commercial Christmas and enjoy a simpler, greener and craftier way of celebrating. Decorate the Christmas tree with homemade gingerbread men, craft a simple wreath from fallen leaves, make gift labels and cards from vintage fabrics, and make traditional Christmas recipes with locally sourced organic food. Sheherazade Goldsmith and a team of crafters give you over 80 wonderful ideas and projects for a more creative and sustainable Christmas.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3815 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

Review
"This book not only shares my love for traditional yuletide but also attempts to readdress the balance, reclaiming Christmas from the high street and getting it back into the home" 4 out of 5 stars
--BBC Countryfile, 01 December 2008

About the Author
Sheherazade Goldsmith led the life of a typical London girl until she married and had children. Concerned by the poor quality of food, she started up an organic delicatessen that soon specialized in wholesome home-cooked food for babies and young children. She also wrote a column for the Sunday Times Style magazine focusing on the importance of local and organic food. Sheherazade divides her time between a home in London and a small but busy organic farm in Devon.

Customer Reviews

Some good ideas, some not so!
To begin with - this book does get a 5 star review. It contains lots of lovely ideas and gorgeous pictures to inspire you. Each project contains step by step guidance and pictures. The idea behind the book is a good one; we can all strive to be that bit more ecologically friendly. It's probably a little on the simple side - but then I guess you could do some of the projects with children? There are chapters on 'Welcome', 'Christmas Tree', 'Giving', 'Table' and 'Food'.

I do have some quibbles..... Some of the projects are - lets be very honest here - basic. This does make you think that maybe they are fillers? An example of what I see as a filler is: Christmas tree in a pot (yep - putting a christmas tree in a pot.....).

Projects contained include:

Plant a winter garden
Fabric Garland
Cinnamon spice bundles
Advent calendar sacks
Seaside foot scrub
Evergreen centrepiece
Vanilla cookies
Chocolate brittle

Ahh, a lovely book
What a lovely book. If you want something to really get you into the mood for christmas, this will do it. It presents christmas craft ideas in a simple and inspiring way, and really gives a lovely homely, simple christmas feel.
The crafts are simple yet inspiringly easy, and it encouraged me to dust off the sewing machine and give it a go. So far I've made the fireplace garland, walnut bread and leaf wreath - all of which were simple and stress free. The items I made actually looked like the pictures too. Other items I intend to make are the gooey brownies, raspberry gin, stockings and stocking garland and home made christmas cards and wrapping paper.
True there are some duff ideas, such as potting a christmas tree, but this book is so big it's not really a problem as there are plenty of other decent ideas to make up for it. And yes, some of the ideas are pretty simple, but I hadn't thought of them before and they only added to my enthusiasm for the simplicity.
Beautiful, I can see I will be referring to this book many times over the next few years.

Not as exciting as a Christmas book should be
This book follows on from "A Slice of Organic Life" which was a very sweet book with lots of proper advice about beginning to keep chickens, make your own compost, etc.

However this book is a lot weaker than the previous title. The pictures aren't tempting, especially of the dried orange tree decorations - they look (to me) disgusting, old and dried up! It also has some factual errors such as claiming that if your Christmas tree goes to landfill it will take "hundreds of years" to rot down. Hmmmm.... And many of the craft projects are the kind of thing where it looks like a good idea at the time (making felt birds for the Christmas tree); but where eventually you realise it's going to take about 3 days of solid work and a lot of shopping and money to make these so-called "simple and homely" decorations...

If you are a real fan of Sheherezade you might enjoy the book but NB that she was the editor, rather than the writer, and the only bit copyrighted by her is the introduction - she is clearly credited on the cover as "editor in chief", not the author.

I totally agree with what Village Preservation Society says in her review - it's sweet, and it's a goal we all want to aim for. But honestly, lots of the stuff (like sticking dried seed heads to a photo album cover) look as if they will fall apart instantly, which nobody wants! Sorry to be so down on the book, because it's a nice idea, but it's just NOT done nicely enough for me to give it more of a recommendation.