Today I went with Lyssa to Chatsworth House to see the Christmas decorations! Absolutely gorgeous, they are all based around the beautiful paper art of Jan Pienkowski, creating wonderful tableaus of shadow puppet style cut outs at various intervals through the house.

All the trees were in white and gold and many of the rooms had been adorned with fabulous swags of fir and twinkling lights. A truly magical experience. Chatsworth is always spectacular but at Christmas it is even more so.

Before going round the house we wandered through the grounds, admiring the fabulous shapes of branches and contrasts of leafs and statues, then we got lost in the maze... but so did everyone else! hurah!

We had booked online and had a wonderful afternoon tea in the carriage restaurant, led to our reserved table completely by passing the queue. The food was lovely, with tiny sandwiches and scones and cakes. They kept replenishing our pots of tea and refilling the cake stand too!!

Because it got dark early we were able to admire the illuminated trees at the front of the house and the dramatic floodlighting, what a lovely start to Christmas ;0