To find the Halloween and Christmas decor available now over the top

[thebear1]

Seems to have gone from sticking a pumpkin in the window for Halloween or hanging some decorations on the tree at Christmas to themed duvets, cushions, mugs and outfits for pets etc. I know I don't have to join in and I don't, but I just think it's pretty rubbish environmentally.

[toulet]

I wonder how much lack of storage is a factor?

donate to charity then?

[NooNakedJacuzziness]

Whilst I agree that Mrs Hinch's decor is totally unnecessary and OTT I much prefer natural decorations e.g holly, pine cones, autumn leaves, etc, than the glittery plastic shite that appears in the shops each year. Who the feck needs a sequinned mermaid Santa (spotted the other day)??

[InCheesusWeTrust]

@ofwarren

I've just googled them and they look really nice. I like how the kids can make them by collecting sticks and then painting the eggs. Much more preferable than buying a plastic tree.

The best is to get particular branches which are likely to flower like that.
Pussy willow, forsythia or apple tree branches

[debbiewest0]

I certainly know there were choices of “plastic tat” when I was a child. Garlands for the ceilings, baubles on the tree, foil decorations. We still have them so they existed. but not so much for Halloween, I think that has gone up but people seem to like it.
people can buy things that make them happy with their own money. I like my Christmas duvet cover.
what’s different I think is there are more options sold as single use and more people who seem to think that just because there are new themes sold in John Lewis each year that it means you have to bin yours and buy new each year. Rather than just choosing a new bauble to sit next to the 40 year old bauble.

I do think that these people online like mrs hunch should try and bring a message of not being wasteful, choosing reusable items, not having to have all new trends so that it doesn’t all end up in landfill….

[debbiewest0]

sorry, mrs hinch not hunch haha!

[ofwarren]

@InCheesusWeTrust

The best is to get particular branches which are likely to flower like that.
Pussy willow, forsythia or apple tree branches

Good idea, they would look lovely.
I think I might have a go next Easter.

[InCheesusWeTrust]

@debbiewest0 oh my god the foil garlands. I was on mission last year to get some which would look like the ones from my childhood😂

[InCheesusWeTrust]

@ofwarren

Good idea, they would look lovely.
I think I might have a go next Easter.

Get them about 3 weeks before. You can get different trees like cherry as well.
Cut ones with most buds on, then cut bottoms from side down a bit like half V so there is lots of area to take water in, put in water, place in nice sunny/light spot. Should flower by easter😁

[debbiewest0]

@InCheesusWeTrust

@debbiewest0 oh my god the foil garlands. I was on mission last year to get some which would look like the ones from my childhood😂

You can still get the foil garlands, we have them. Often we get them in wilko or Poundland and we just fold them back up flat for next year, minimal storage!

[InCheesusWeTrust]

They are great for that @debbiewest0 I will look in wilko when I am not near mine one. That is an embarrassment to Wilkos!

[UWhatNow]

All made in China too so buying them supports slavery and an oppressive totalitarian regime.

[SilverGlassHare]

I quite like the nice Christmas stuff but I don't understand the need for a new set of baubles every year. My friend does this - she chooses a new colour scheme each year and bins the previous years. But doesn't believe its wasteful.

We have use the same decs every year - with a few more to replace the inevitable breakages - all red, green and gold glass, metal and wood. Some of them inherited from my my, some even from my gran and great gran. No plastic allowed! But a little part of me would like to have a different theme every year. Trouble is a) it’s wasteful and b) it would almost certainly have to be cheap plastic baubles to be affordable.

I scare my husband a little early year by threatening to start a collection of blue, purple and silver decorations, again all lovely arty glass etc, buying a few every year and putting them up in the loft until I have enough to do the entire tree one year. But it’s just a fantasy really. I love the idea of different themes because I love decorating at Christmas but it’s not a sensible use of my money or the world’s resources.

[Phrenologistsfinger]

www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/chinas-yiwu-village-produces-around-60-worlds-christmas-decorations-its-hardly-jolly-life-workers/

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/architecture-design-blog/2014/dec/19/santas-real-workshop-the-town-in-china-that-makes-the-worlds-christmas-decorations


“There’s red on the ceiling and red on the floor, red dripping from the window sills and red globules splattered across the walls. It looks like the artist Anish Kapoor has been let loose with his wax cannon again. But this, in fact, is what the making of Christmas looks like; this is the very heart of the real Santa’s workshop – thousands of miles from the North Pole, in the Chinese city of Yiwu.
Our yuletide myth-making might like to imagine that Christmas is made by rosy-cheeked elves hammering away in a snow-bound log cabin somewhere in the Arctic Circle. But it’s not. The likelihood is that most of those baubles, tinsel and flashing LED lights you’ve draped liberally around your house came from Yiwu, 300km south of Shanghai – where there’s not a (real) pine tree nor (natural) snowflake in sight.
Christened “China’s Christmas village”, Yiwu is home to 600 factories that collectively churn out over 60% of all the world’s Christmas decorations and accessories, from glowing fibre-optic trees to felt Santa hats. The “elves” that staff these factories are mainly migrant labourers, working 12 hours a day for a maximum of £200 to £300 a month – and it turns out they’re not entirely sure what Christmas is.

Wei gets through at least 10 face masks each day, trying not to breathe in the cloud of red dust. Photograph: Imaginechina/Rex

“Maybe it’s like [Chinese] New Year for foreigners,” says 19-year-old Wei, a worker who came to Yiwu from rural Guizhou province this year, speaking to Chinese news agency Sina. Together with his father, he works long days in the red-splattered lair, taking polystyrene snowflakes, dipping them in a bath of glue, then putting them in a powder-coating machine until they turn red – and making 5,000 of the things every day.

In the process, the two of them end up dusted from head to toe in fine crimson powder. His dad wears a Santa hat (not for the festive spirit, he says, but to stop his hair from turning red) and they both get through at least 10 face masks a day, trying not to breathe in the dust. It’s a tiring job and they probably won’t do it again next year: once they’ve earned enough money for Wei to get married, they plan on returning home to Guizhou and hopefully never seeing a vat of red powder again.
Packaged up in plastic bags, their gleaming red snowflakes hang alongside a wealth of other festive paraphernalia across town in the Yiwu International Trade Market, aka China Commodity City, a 4m sq m wonder-world of plastic tat. It is a pound shop paradise, a sprawling trade show of everything in the world that you don’t need and yet may, at some irrational moment, feel compelled to buy. There are whole streets in the labyrinthine complex devoted to artificial flowers and inflatable toys, then come umbrellas and anoraks, plastic buckets and clocks. It is a heaving multistorey monument to global consumption, as if the contents of all the world’s landfill sites had been dug-up, re-formed and meticulously catalogued back into 62,000 booths.

The complex was declared by the UN to be the “largest small commodity wholesale market in the world” and the scale of the operation necessitates a kind of urban plan, with this festival of commerce organised into five different districts. District Two is where Christmas can be found.
[…]”

[incognitopurple]

YADNBU, it’s sad actually. I do feel a bit bad that I haven’t gone all out and constantly feel the compulsion to buy decorations when in shops and supermarkets, but unless it’s things you can keep and reuse for years then a huge waste tbh.

Storage is an issue for us for decorations anyway, we need a new tree this year and will probably get a fake one but as for where we will store it in our new house - who knows!

[balalake]

I think it goes alongside the whole upscaling of events- things being termed a weekend instead of a day, 'big' events etc.

The very least I think should happen is the banning of materials being used which can cause harm to marine and other life, such as glitter.

[RoseZinfandel]

Dc needed some new pyjamas a few autumns ago, and the only ones we could find were black and orange Halloween themed with pumpkins or skeletons or ghosts on.
I suppose it makes a change from Christmas designs.

DC wore them fairly happily until they were too small, and now dc2 has them, so not wasteful, I suppose, but none of us have never been overly keen on Halloween, or the colour orange, so definitely wouldn’t have chosen them!

[LaurieFairyCake]

I do an Easter wreath - actually it's a spring wreath - and hang egg decorations on a small lighted tree (that's up all year)

I don't do anything for Halloween

[BonesOfWhatYouBelieve]

@NooNakedJacuzziness

Whilst I agree that Mrs Hinch's decor is totally unnecessary and OTT I much prefer natural decorations e.g holly, pine cones, autumn leaves, etc, than the glittery plastic shite that appears in the shops each year. Who the feck needs a sequinned mermaid Santa (spotted the other day)??

It's the food waste that bothers me most. All that food is going to be thrown away. I think it's awful.

[Discovereads]

@BonesOfWhatYouBelieve

It's the food waste that bothers me most. All that food is going to be thrown away. I think it's awful.

Yep that’s what made me feel ill. The amount of edible squash and pumpkins there. Just to rot away as decoration when people are starving. It’s very Marie Antoinette out of touch.

[thebear1]

I do appreciate some people will reuse and I have friends who will wear a ghost jumper all year round. It's the volume I don't like, some must just end up in landfill.

[ofwarren]

@balalake

I think it goes alongside the whole upscaling of events- things being termed a weekend instead of a day, 'big' events etc.

The very least I think should happen is the banning of materials being used which can cause harm to marine and other life, such as glitter.

Yes! It's all about birthday weekends, stag and hen week on holiday and destination weddings.

[FistFullOfRegrets]

@debbiewest0

You can still get the foil garlands, we have them. Often we get them in wilko or Poundland and we just fold them back up flat for next year, minimal storage!

You can get foil garlands, but they're nothing like ones from my childhood (1970's) sadly

[loottie]

I bought a few plastic Halloween bits last year, for the first time because Halloween has become big on my street, suddenly everyone's children are the right age and a couple American families have moved in so they have raised the bar considerably!

I chose the tat carefully and I know I will use them year on year (they get carefully boxed up and stored in my loft) I can't be bothered to carve a pumpkin myself and I have no children, so I make paper shapes for the window, very cheap and very little waste as it all goes in the recycling bin afterwards.

[girlfriend44]

yes its horrible and does everyone throw their outfits away every year then and need a new one each year.

As for all the selection boxes and chocolate, as if we need all that with all the other junk people now eat daily.

[TwoMonthsOff]

Everything I have seen for sale is unnecessary plastic landfill shit