My reviews and comparisons of this year’s crop of festive magazines.
Are you as mad about Christmas as I am? Well, I start planning early and Father Christmas usually gets some help from the Claire’s Accessories summer sales! As well as watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Muppet’s Christmas Carol over and over again, I also can’t wait for the beginning of November for all the Christmas magazines to come out. This year I’ve bought: Ideal Home, Home, Country Homes and Interiors, Good Homes, Living Etc and Ideal Home’s Complete Guide to Christmas.
Last year I bought even more and wrote a reminder in my Christas notebook of what not to get. Last Year Inspirations for Your Home had loads of the same pictures and decorations as Home, so I haven’t bothered with that one this year. I also wrote that I shouldn’t buy House and Gardens as it was rubbish – all glossy adverts and nothing interesting inside. Also more expensive than the others I think.
So anyway, I was disappointed with Living Etc. I used to buy this all the time a couple of years ago, and I wondered if the editor has changed since then because it seems to me to be extremely pretentious and up itself now. It has no imagination at all and if it were a person it would dress from head to toe in the latest designer thing even if it looked crap! This magazine is far too try-hard.
On the other hand, I stopped buying BBC Good Homes because it got far too into things like using an old t-shirt to dab paint on the walls. But it terms of style, this has definitely improved and probably has the most interesting content to read. (not just pretty pictures). But unfortunately it does go back to its roots in one section as its Interior design course part eight is all about using things like fake ceiling roses – honestly!
The Ideal Home’s Complete Guide to Christmas is really good and full of creative ideas for decorating. The only down side is that it came out so early it didn’t have examples of things available in the shops, but for that you can get the December issue of Ideal Home, which surprisingly didn’t repeat itself. So I’d recommend both of those. (Unlike last year when Home was virtually identical to Christmas at Home).
Also Home is good this year with lots of information on where to get decorations and good present ideas.
So it’s quite a good selection this year, and nearly all of them came with a free stylish decoration or candles. Except Living Etc which came with a free designer small catalogue (how generous). They seem to have been more individual this year. Last year was a bit of a joke with the amount of pictures I found being repeated in different magazines. There must have been a Christmas warehouse in London or something and all the magazines sent people out to photograph the same thing. There are still a couple of things shared about (a particular pulley lamp and a dining table decorated in black and red), but on the whole it’s much better this year.