Christmas in the Cotswolds with Amanda Brooks

So all the Santas have different faces,

some of them friendlier than others.

This one looks a little bit cross.

[relaxed jazz music]

My name is Amanda Brooks and I am a shop owner and a writer.

I live in Oxfordshire, England, in the Cotswolds.

The shop is very much inspired by the English countryside

and everything in it is somehow connected

to the life that I live here.

So Christmas in the shop starts in January.

I work with very specific Eastern European vendors.

Most of them are family owned for generations

and everything they do is incredible.

I really love color for Christmas.

I'm not a white lights person, as you can see

I'm a colored lights person and a color decoration person.

I would source vintage ornaments mostly from Poland

and I, when I discovered these, I was so excited

'cause I felt like they looked like the vintage ones

I've been buying but you could buy quantities.

I love these, there's a rose on one side

and a tulip on the other.

One of my new discoveries was these artichokes

and just beautiful colors,

little lines of glitter around the edge.

This tablecloth is very special to me

because it was made by my friend Tara,

who has a company called Zojora.

She lives in Singapore and she makes everything in India,

but she's a very old friend of mine

and the ruffle tablecloth has to be credited to David Netto,

it was his idea.

[relaxed jazz music]

Livia Cetti makes these incredible green vase paper flowers

that we use all year round in the shop.

We always curate according to the season.

And my favorite one this year is the poinsettia.

[relaxed jazz music]

So the shop is kind of like a creative haven for me.

I wouldn't have anything in the shop

that I wouldn't have in my home.

[relaxed jazz music]

[birds singing]

[relaxed music]

People always ask me how I survive the English winter

and I always say the fireplace replaces the sun

because at 3:30 when the sun goes in,

it's just very nice to come in and have the warmth

and the light from the fire.

What I love about this house is the architecture's

so beautiful, the wood beams, the plaster walls

you could just take all of the decoration out

and have it be something super minimal, very Axel Vervoordt,

but I get very tempted sometimes

to just get rid of the clutter

and just make it like the most beautiful empty space.

The first time I came to Fairgreen Farm was in 1997.

I had just turned 23.

I'd been dating Christopher maybe two or three weeks.

Well it was our holiday, but I was very shocked,

'cause Christopher spent the whole time on a tractor

and I was like, What am I meant to do? [laughs]

So what I ended up doing was cooking.

So I would just pick up a cookbook from the bookshelf

and cook every recipe in it.

[relaxed music]

This cane is very special,

it belonged to my great-grandfather

and it has his name on it.

It says G H Cutter.

So Cutter is my American maiden name

and Brooks is my English married name.

Well there used to be two sofas going like that

in front of the fireplace so I just put the one

with the two chairs on either side and this back table.

The raw plaster walls are what inspired me

to use raw plaster on the walls in the shop.

In contrast to the shop, Christmas season

in our house is slightly shorter.

So I like to use lots of natural things,

garland specifically, and I try to use as many kind

of local things as possible like Holly,

which grows on the farm, eucalyptus.

My mum was the queen of Christmas, she really was.

I mean we used to have a 24 foot Christmas tree

in our living room.

Every year I bring home kind of the things

that inspire me most from the shop for the tree.

And so I was super into these birds which my grandmother

had when I was a child and then my mother had them.

And when I found these I thought, Wow there's thousands

of my favorite bird ornaments.

And they have cherries at the bottom or berries

and then one has a little wicker basket, that's super cute.

I started feeling like, Oh god, I'm in the mood

for tinsel but then I thought of like the literal tinsel

I had in the '80s and I was like, No, that's two kitsch.

So when I saw this in Germany, I thought,

Wow, that's really incredible tinsel.

It's half kitsch, half tasteful

and the fact that there's gold and silver, I really like,

as I love mixing gold and silver.

[relaxed music]

So this backgammon table is probably

my most coveted possession.

It belonged to my parents in our house in the Adirondacks

and when they sold the house they said we could each

take something that was very meaningful to us,

so I shipped this over from America.

It just evoked so many memories of my childhood

playing with my grandfather, playing with my mother

playing with my kids.

So it's really amazing that I can have it here in England.

[relaxed music]

For me, Christmas is not about good taste,

Christmas is about feeling happy.

I'm really quite fond of this fox, I think he's very sweet.

Someone actually bought him yesterday

so I'll have to send him off.

[relaxed music]

Well this room is a new color scheme for me

because I'm usually very colorful

but inspired by the gold and silver Bertozzi table linens

and the gold leaf Zsuzsanna ceramics, I decided to do

a metallic and neutral color Christmas table this year.

The chandeliers are from our ornament decoration maker

in Germany and they're incredibly light

and quite indestructible actually.

And I just think it's so charming that this seems

like a safe way to have lit candles in the house.

The worst thing that happens, they fall on the table,

it's not the end of the world.

[relaxed music]

Christmas Eve dinner, we usually just have my mother-in-law

and my kids and my husband

and it's a more intimate dinner and it's lovely.

[relaxed music]

So this little seating area is really inspired

by my mother-in-law because she is 89

and I wanted to create a space

where she could enjoy Christmas with us

and enjoy the tree and be cozy

and where we can, you know kind of not feel

so restricted during lockdown to celebrate

with our family on the farm.

Our red mushrooms are incredibly popular in the shop.

Every vendor that I buy from makes their own version

of the red mushroom and often many versions.

So they're all different shapes and sizes

and this is kind of my selection of all my favorite ones.

I love the massive mushroom at the top.

I've never seen a a mushroom tree topper.

It's incredibly special.

I mean it sounds ridiculous but I'm sure other people

that are creative can relate that

just to be in like the perfect expression of your taste

and style is very satisfying.

[relaxed music]