Hybrid Handmade Christmas - Christmas Card

Christmas Card 2010, Cari-Jane Hakes

Here, you know the weather is heading towards its wintry decent when you can smell the first wood fire burning.  I would say this is how the vast majority of homes are heated here.  Actually getting hold of the wood to keep yourself warm through the winter months is a curious affair.  Various individuals seem to manage to corral vast hoards of the stuff.  However, if you don't know them (or know someone that they know) they won't sell it to you!

Thankfully, my man plays for the local football team. This has given us a level of integration which has meant that we have an outbuilding full of wood!

So here is my French Vendean inspired Christmas card.  It has all the elements that I love about this place.  The wind turbines, the way the church sits with a reassuringly solidity within the village square, the modest dwellings and of course, the curling wood smoke which means that the inhabitants knows someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who has fire wood!