Christmas Archives - Kidding Herself

Celebrate at the New Year and Christmas tree decorations factory in Klin, Russia

In the small town of Klin in Russia it is forever New Year, at least it is in the Museum of New Year Tree Ornaments, attached to the factory that produces them in Klinskoye Podvorye.

A number of New Year and Christmas tree ornaments hang on a tree

Or, if you prefer, the Museum of Christmas Tree Decorations, the difference being almost indistinguishable in Soviet Russia, at least as far as the secular aspect of Christmas goes. Like decorated fir trees.

Delicate, handmade glass ornaments have long been a feature of yolkas (the Russian word for New Year/ Christmas trees), and every family may well have their own set of idiosyncratic baubles, although good taste might have overtaken the ones they actually put on display.

Vintage glass tree ornaments, mostly in the shape of stars

So if you wonder around any flea market, you can pick up genuine vintage ones, and last year, there was a display in GUM of the collection that a famous TV presenter here has amassed over the years by doing just that.

Mama’s personal favourite of Papa’s own collection is the pickled onion. Shame that small children and then a kitten who climbed the tree once a day means that she tends to stick to the hand-painted wooden ones when the festive season swings round these days.

But when she was offered the chance to tour one of the more famous factories where these tree decorations are actually made, she jumped at the chance. And in fact the name of the New Year/ Christmas tree decorations factory in Klin is ‘Yolochka’, in case you were not sure what its focus really is.

That said, I think the tour at Yolochka is more of an experience than a factory visit.

There are dressed up characters who get you in the mood, tell you all about glass, tell you all about the history of glass making in Klin, and tell you all about the history of glass New Year/ Christmas tree ornament making.

A character dressed in a blue onsie covered in coloured circles wearing a curly blue wig on the tree ornament factory tour in Klin Russia

Essentially it seems that what started off as a cottage industry making small colourful glass beads for necklaces, morphed into a cottage industry making long strings of colourful glass beads you could hang on a tree, other iterations of decorations and finally went full on large glass ball blowing, albeit still in a very handcrafted sort of manner.

A seated woman in a long ornate red and gold frilly dress and an overdecorated hat explains the origins of the Klin glass factory while seated in a replica wooden peasant's house.

The Yolochka New Year/ Christmas tree decorations factory in Klin was the first large commercial production facility in Russia, in fact.

At this point on the tour, Mama was delighted that we got shepherded into a room to watch actual crafstswomen blow some glass.

Mama was grumpy that she wasn’t allowed to take pictures at this point. She also wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the women in the next room who were painting the resulting New Year/ Christmas baubles.

Tree ornamentsin various stages of being painted at Yolochka factory in Klin

It was very cool though.

Yes, the word ‘factory’ does imply a certain mechanical automation of the process. But in fact, although there is clearly a production line in the sense that it’s a different person who blows the glass to the one who paints it, they really are not joking when they call it handmade.

In case you are wondering, among the most difficult to blow are the samovar shaped baubles, because they require you to be able to get three bubbles out of one glass form.

At the end of the tour they have a display of baubles and other tree ornaments painted by some of the more renowned tree ornament artists.

Nine hand painted Russian glass baubles with variouus winter scanes from around Klin in Russia, including a statue of Tchaikovsky on a bench.

Luckily for you, she was allowed to get the camera out again when we got onto the displays of New Year/ Christmas tree ornaments through the ages. And of course, since these are mostly Soviet ones, there are some really fabulous space themed ones.

A selection of vintage Russian space themed tree ornaments, including cosmonauts and space rockets

No, I have no idea how Yolochka does the cosmonaut shaped ones, the tree shaped ones and so on and so forth. Gotta have some secrets, haven’t you?

And finally the last stop on the Museum of New Year/ Christmas Tree Decorations tour is getting to meet Ded Moroz, the Russian Santa analogue! Himself! We held hands, sang the New Year Tree song, and paraded around a truly large, thoroughly decorated tree.

Ded Moroz stands in front of a decorated tree at the New Year and Christmas tree decorations factory in Klin. He is wearing a long blue coat with white patterns and fur trim, and large blue mittens and a white hat. He has a long white beard and outstretched arms, one of which is holding a tall white staff.

In October!

Then it was onto the masterclass of tree ornament painting. Obviously. We covered ourselves in glitter. It was great.

A tree ornament in a green box with the name of the factory, 'Yolochka', on it. The ornament has clearly not been painted by a master.

And Mama was by this time thoroughly primed to buy All The Things in the Yolochka factory shop. Luckily they have a range of stock to suit every budget. Mama recommends looking out for whatever odd animal theme seems to be incongruously conspicuous among the decorations. The Russians look to the other great celebrators of New Year, the Chinese, to add a bit of spice to the festivities. So whatever animal is coming up for Chinese New Year next will have a big presence in the New Year decorations on offer.

This year, the year of the pig gives way to the year of the rat. Mice everywhere you look!

Now, to get to this Museum of Russian Christmas/ New Year Tree Decorations, you will have to leave Moscow, and it’s a good hour’s journey on a fast train. It’s possibly a bit far to go just for this experience. Luckily, Klin is also the location of the Tchaikovsky House Museum. Frankly you really are missing an opportunity if, as well as visiting that, you do not pop over and experience the tour here as well.

Whatever time of the year.

More information

The New Year/ Christmas tree decorations factory in Klin, Yolochka’s website (in Russian).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about how to make salt dough decorations.

Address: 141600, Moscow region, Klin, Ulitsa Staroyamskaya, 4

Opening: Every day, 9am – 5.30pm (except 31st December, 1st and 2nd of January).

Admission: Around 500 roubles per person, although it depends how close it is to New Year and whether it is a weekend. Children under six are half price. It’s about 300 roubles extra for a masterclass.

Getting there: You need a train from the Leningradsky train station, found atop the Komsomolskaya metro station on the red and brown lines. If you get a fast, lastochka train you will be in Klin in an hour. Buy return tickets in Moscow if you have children, as concession tickets cannot be bought in Klin and you’ll have to pay full price for your kids to return to the capital. The trains run around every one to two hours, more during peak times. If you get a slow train it will take at least 30 minutes longer. One way tickets for adults will be around 300 roubles. You can easily buy them at the Leningradsky station itself, but don’t lose the rather flimsy paper – it’s what opens he gates to and from the platform, and it will be checked on the train itself.

You can drive (or get a taxi). Head for St Petersburg.

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In Klin it is forever the winter holidays on the tour of the New Year and Christmas tree decorations factory. You can even make your own baubles!

Homebase, everywhere in the UK

There’s a place near our house where Mama and I often go to while away time on the way back from dropping off my Brilliant Big Brother at school, or when waiting for him to finish sitting on people at JuJitsu, or just because its sheer brilliance calls to us and it is raining. It’s a huge cave of wonders full of shiny things, exotic plants, thrilling computer games, colourful soft furnishings, thoughtful short films, well maintained race tracks, beautiful samples of crafting paper, giant wendy houses stuffed with really cool furniture, none of your cheap plastic tat, and it even has a thrilling fairground ride.

Its name is Homebase and I really love it.

The first thing that makes Homebase the perfect preschooler hangout is that on a weekday it is almost deserted. As long as I don’t go mad and try to break the land speed record for someone on a Minimicro, nobody seems to mind me puttering around its acres of splendidly wide aisles to my heart’s content so Mama’s normal ban on such things is relaxed.

Even better though is that Homebase has the kind of professionally smoothed plastic flooring that means I can glide with the merest of featherlight pushes. Delightful.

Another thing I like are the funky interior decorating games on the touch screens. You pick your room, select your paint colours and go wild! Lately I have also been getting well into selecting my flooring and pimping the furniture too. Perhaps one day I will persuade Mama to bring in pictures of our actual house, just like the game suggests, for me to have fun with. I am sure we can do better than Mama’s current choice of mainly mushroom throughout.

I’ve managed to get her to pick up a few samples of wallpaper before, but what usually happens is that Mama suffers a crisis of confidence in our choice of teal with pops of scarlet and turns it all into a craft project.

There is a reason why this is not a home and interiors blog, and the other one is that Mama has been trying to choose the right floor standing lamp for about eight years, but despite numerous excursions around the section of the store that is forever celebrating something with its joyful mishmash of all possibly lighting designs, she hasn’t been able to settle on one yet.

The only niggle I have with the computers is that for some reason these play stations have been placed inconveniently high up from the point of view of a four year old. However! This problem is usually solved by means of a handy chair to stand on. Or there’s always Mama to pick me up. Still, you’d think Homebase’d find it easier just to put them where its main customer base could easily get at them.

When gaming palls, there is always… the lift! It’s one of those ones where you get to operate the elevation machinery yourself, which always makes for a fabulously exciting ride, even if it is also extremely slow. Actually, I think that the building anticipation of getting to the top brought about by travelling at roughly the speed of a very tardy snail crawling up a wall is part of the fun. I am ready to explode when we finally get to step out!

And I am rewarded! At the top of the lift are the full sized toy kitchens, living rooms and bathrooms. Amazing number and wonderful variety of drawers to open and close, open and close, open and close! Mama really gets into the play opportunities alongside me here. She seems fascinated by the doors where you can pull out double the number of shelves from inside a seemingly small cupboard. It’s her love of Doctor Who and the TARDIS I expect, although she also enjoys gazing wistfully into the really giant fridges. I can see why. There’s never anything in them! That would make anyone sad.

That said, I am always a bit disappointed that the experience of finding a whole bunch of sweets waiting for us up there has not been repeated since the mince pie, mulled wine and chocolates excitement of Christmas. I thought we’d struck lucky again last week, because there was a large vase full of marshmallows in exactly the same place the Quality Streets were yuletide. It turned out that you were not supposed to eat them but guess how many there were inside. Huge let down. No idea what prize could possibly be more exciting than getting to eat the squidgy goodness, preferably with cocoa.

Not that I will be getting any cocoa as Homebase inexplicably does not contain a cafe. There is a hot drinks vending machine, and a burger van in the carpark too, but somehow this is not the same, especially as for some reason you are not able to make use of all the lovely sofas, armchairs, breakfast bars, garden furniture, dining rooms sets or even the large number of broken toilets that litter Homebase in order to have a nice sit down when you consume your purchase. This is a great shame in my opinion.

My Tremendous Big Brother likes the documentaries that are shown on screens scattered throughout Homebase. He was particularly taken by the one about the nifty new invention you can use to wash your feet while in the shower without having to do any bending. It’s a plastic slipper! But it’s also a brush! And more! You can buy them in Homebase! How cool is that? My Tremendous Big Brother was insistent for weeks that this was what he wanted for his birthday. In the end, the slipperbrushes lost out to more soft toy animals. It was a close run thing though.

And we do buy some things at Homebase, although that’s obviously not the main purpose of the place. Especially at Christmas. For some reason, Homebase celebrates the festive season two weeks in advance of everybody else, and takes away all its decorations down straight after. That’s OK, because they practically give away all their fairy lights, holly shaped banners and glass baubles at exactly the time when Mama is just thinking about putting our shiny things up, and so we invariably find ourselves with a large bag of new Santa shaped items for what Mama describes smugly as mere pennies.

But Mama really likes their outdoor garden area too and so too do our balcony window boxes. Bulbs, herbs, tomatoes and lots and lots of small mixnmatch flowers are what we are into. Every year we buy more and more. I think Mama is going for the record of how many plants she can cram into one small terracotta trough. It probably would just be easier to get Mama an allotment, but that might require her to learn more about gardening than just the ability to shove things other people have grown into compost and water them regularly. I do not think that is going to happen, frankly. Mama can barely cope with indoor houseplants requiring a year-round commitment.

I am prepared to tolerate the living things section because there is quite a high possibility that when we go there, somebody might be spraying water around. And my Tremendous Big Brother, ever the art lover, likes the animal sculptures. Not quite as much as he likes the door stopper shelf though. Massively heavy cuddly toy heaven!

Homebase, then, has a wide variety of attractions for all the family and deserves your consideration as a going out venue, not merely a place to pop to if you are in need of some mouse traps, cement, sand or a replacement peace lily. Go for it!

More Information

Homebase’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about the real cost of improving your home.

Address: A big box retail park near you throughout the UK.

Opening: Typically, 9am to 9pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 4pm Sunday. Some stores have slightly longer hours.

Admission: Free! To get in.

By car: Even in London, Homebase stores have decent amounts of free parking.

The Great London Christmas Window Scavenger Hunt 2014

“I’ve got a treat for us today,” said Mama. Toys, we thought. A trip to the zoo, we got even more exited. Maybe even lunch at Macdonald’s. Lunch at MacDonald’s, with a Happy Meal toy at the zoo?

No.

“We’re going to look at Christmasy shop windows around London!” Said Mama.

Mama thinks we should be more into walking. She’d like it to be walking around wild open spaces, preferably upwards towards the top of a smallish mountain, but our big city is curiously lacking in really large hills in the middle of nowhere so sometimes she makes do with the highways and byways of central London.

She recognises that we are less than keen on rambles with no discernible point. Thus the idea of the Great Christmas Window Scavenger Hunt 2014 was born. Won’t it be fun, Mama put to us, to go and look at all the festive offerings around town? Father Christmas and His reindeer! Tinsel!! Baubles!!! Cute winterproof animals!!!! High calorie foodstuffs carved into the shape of Christmas trees!!! Snooooooooooooooooow! Twinkley lights!!!! TOYS!!!!! And other such heartwarming scenes of rampant commercialism.

We were a bit dubious and had to be bribed with the promise of actually being allowed into a shop to look at overpriced plastic tat. Papa was a bit dubious too but Mama said he could have dinner in Chinatown, so he was won round. Babushka, well, I am not sure what Babushka thought but she came along anyway.

We started off at the John Lewis on Sloan Square. Penguins! Can’t go too far wrong with penguins in amusing positions Mama thought.

The ones with underwear on their heads were a particular hit with us children.

Mama felt it was a bit minimal and lacking in your actual jolly sparkly decoration. But then she managed to go the whole Christmas period without seeing That Advert and so is probably missing something.

Harrods, I am pleased to say, did not disappoint Mama. You want a giant Santa with moving flying reindeer toting prominently placed dolly Elsa from Frozen? YES MAMA WE CERTAINLY DO! ELSA! LETITGOHEREISTANDLETITGOLETITGOLETITGOLETITGO! Sorry, where were we?

You want rotating men with antlers on their bowlers, despite the fact that Papa felt it was a potentially controversial reference to Joseph as a cuckold (whatever that is)?

You want miniature mousey dioramas with ACTUAL FALLING SNOW? Which admittedly were far too high up the wall for me, but then what are parents for?

You want inadequately dressed women in chilly-looking forests? A giant clock? Handbags? Harrods had ’em all.

Not sure what the rainbow stripy clothes in the window at the end have to do with the nativity, but I am young and some of the references go over my head. They were lovely and bright though so its all good.

We went into Harrods. Mama normally enjoys a good poke around this fabulous emporium of really REALLY expensive stuff. And the toilets. But on this occasion it was very very busy and not so much fun. I spent a lot of time being firmly towed through a huge wall of bodies (well, legs) as Mama and Papa tried to find the Christmas bit with only a brief pause to contemplate the price of caviar and enjoy the tiling in the food hall. Harrods, it seems, is large and somewhat labyrinthine, if also exceedingly shiny. When we eventually found the Christmas area, it was smaller than expected, although that might have been the effect of so many people. It did have an excellent advent calendar in the form of a porcelain dolls house where every door concealed another delicate Wedgewood ornament. A snip at many thousands of pounds. For some reason, us trying to play with it stressed Mama and Papa right out and we exited without going up to the toy floor. If you decide to take a look inside Harrods during peak Christmas shopping days with small children, Mama recommends going straight there, having worked out your route ahead of time. Or just giving the inside a miss altogether.

It’s certainly worth a wander around at some point, mind.

Mama and I wanted to look at the Harvey Nicks windows, but we were bundled onto the bus by the menfolk at this point so only just caught a glimpse as we shot past at the best speed a double decker caught in Knightsbridge traffic can manege. Lovely lighting, lovely dresses, lovely colourful trees is about all I can tell you.

Instead we headed for Fortnum and Mason, which, according to the windows, sells food. Very very beautiful food. Very beautiful food, all frosty and glittery and magical. We particularly liked the Christmas puddings, although I think my Wonderful Big Brother might have preferred the robins.

Mama was also taken by the silver sleigh and the vodka. She must have been thirsty.

But having learned from our Harrods visit, we didn’t go inside. Mama says the national beverage they sell isn’t all that anyway – her Russian visitors usually prefer Yorkshire Tea. This does not bode well for the chocolates, however fabulous they look.

Onto Regent’s Street, which Mama had been planning to miss in favour of the more attractive and considerably less busy back alleyways. We overruled her because of the toy shop. Called Hamley’s, apparently. It’s a very popular toy shop is Hamley’s. Mama is not entirely sure why because aside from the demonstrators and the opportunity to play with some of the merchandise, there doesn’t seem to be that much here than you can get anywhere else where you can accomplish your spending without the risk of being trampled underfoot by three thousand maurauding small people and their six thousand pursuing parents.

I think Mama is still in mouring after they shut down the massive MASSIVE department store in central Moscow called Detskii Mir (Children’s World). A whole floor of Barbies she tells me. And a full scale working carosel on the main floor. Allegedly it is due to reopen, but Mama is suspicious it will not be the same.

We have not had the pleasure, and are entirely entranced by the hawkers and hands on opportunities. We are also oblivious to Mama’s panic as she tries to keep both of us in view while many many pretty things beckon us this way and that in an environment we are much better at wiggling our way through than she is. However, luckily for the success of the outing, nobody got lost, suffocated or had an epic strop when refused immediate gratification of our consumer whim, although it was a close run thing when Big Brother found the Steiff cuddly animals section.

Next up, Liberty, with a cursory glance towards what Mama thinks are the most fun street Christmas lights. Who doesn’t like a giant Santa face decorated with headphones?

Mama also really likes Liberty, which she thinks is the genuinely eccentric old money cousin to Harrods brash neovaux rich extravagance. Unfortunately for her, we were starting to get hungry at about this point and so did not take to the ship themed windows at all.

Mama managed to persuade us to briefly look in on Oxford Street and its floaty light balls, but we were soon retreating at full pelt towards the promise of noodles and spring rolls in China Town.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Tantrums averted all round, we were ready for another leg, which is how we found out they have a small funfair on Leicester Square. If you don’t fancy the crowds of Hyde Park’s Winter Wonderland, this is a good alternative, especially if you like carousels, which Mama definitely does. There was also an excellent rollercoaster for small people and Papa had obviously let his sticky sweet pork balls go to his head too as he had a go at the archery. He nearly won too!

Then it was on to Trafalgar Square and the very tall but somewhat austerely decorated Norwegian pine tree, the traditional Christmas sound of busked bagpipes, and what Papa says is a very British nativity scene. See the woman doing all the difficult childcare work while the man lolls around chewing a straw? What is it with the incompetent Papa meme in this country, he would like to know. Of course, the nurses at the London hospital where Mama gave birth to my Wonderful Big Brother did single him out for special praise as an exemplary model of clued up fathering in Mama’s medical notes. But since they did this for changing a nappy without any special fuss or needing assistance, I am not sure what side of the argument this falls on. Mama says, you know your society is in trouble when a casual glance at adverts on Russian TV show a more equitable parenting lifestyle than the ones here. I think that’s a bit political for the Christmas episode of the blog, so all I will say is that we ran wildly around the fountains for a bit and then got the bus home.

All in all I would say that as a thrilling day out for the under tens, going to look at Christmas windows isn’t as exciting as Mama thought it would be, although we did enjoy Christmas tree spotting, a sport which we carried on enthusiastically throughout the holiday period. Mama thinks that perhaps having some kind of additional bingo game incentive (the team that fills their score card of festive items first wins a chocolate reindeer!) might help, and that if you have less of an aversion to starting Christmas in November than she does then that might be the time to do it.

And next year they might have a fourteen foot Santa climbing up Selfidges while flinging sweeties to the children below. You can always hope.