Although I always wait until the weekend before Christmas to buy my six-foot Nordmann pine Christmas tree, I like to have some wintery decorations in the house at the beginning of December. It is like a prelude to the Christmas festivities without being Christmassy!

This is especially nice to do when the weather takes a turn for the worse as it has done in the last couple of days in London: we have had a bitterly cold wind and temperatures have dropped to a max of 6°C.

I've been out buying logs, kindling wood and coal to have a lovely log fire in the sitting room, and I've put up my little fake tree at the top of the stairs and a vase of snow-covered branches and dried hydrangeas in a vase at the front door with tiny little birds covered in linen fabric perched in their branches (see if you can spot the four of them!).