New homeowners deck out their new home in Rossett with handcrafted decorations

Savvy shopping has helped them achieve the designer look at a fraction of the cost.

“We’ve invested quite a bit in our Christmas decorations. My obsession with Christmas started with my mum – she’s been Christmas mad throughout my life and has passed it down to me,” Chris explained.

“We built our own 1.5 metre wreath and have hung it between the ground floor and first floor bay windows. The size we wanted would have cost around £1,000 to buy so we did some arts and crafts and made one ourselves.”

They have reindeer decorations in the front garden of their new home at Trevalyn Place, a Castle Green Homes development.

They have two seven-foot-tall Christmas trees – one in the lounge and the other in their bedroom.

“We’ve been collecting baubles from HomeSense for the last three months and have been driving around an hour to stores in Broughton, Liverpool and Manchester for them as they’re limited stock. In Harrods they sell for £20-£30 each but we paid £3.50 per bauble. We’ve topped them up with Nkuku glass baubles, extra branches and pinecones,” Chris added.

“The cottage look in our previous property was more traditional, and we wanted a fresh start to fit with our new home.”

When asked for his advice in choosing new decorations Chris advised others to match them to their décor.

“We have brown and gold in the house, so we have kept with that, with gold and stone effect white decorations,” Chris said.

Chris, 36, who works in recruitment, and Stephen, 40, an ADHD specialist clinician moved to their new home in April from an old stone cottage near Ruthin.

“It was a chocolate box cottage; we’d renovated installing a new kitchen and bathroom. We loved it but wanted something easier to manage and more efficient to run,” Chris recalled.

“We wanted three bedrooms and en-suite, a smallish garden, and easy to maintain. The most important thing to us was the area, which was why we chose Rossett. It has better transport links and a nice village atmosphere.”

Their old home had three log burners and oil-fired central heating.

“We had to be super organised, and it cost a fortune buying logs on a monthly basis and oil for the central heating system every three to six months,” Chris added.

“Our new home is so energy efficient. It’s well insulated and has solar panels. It’s been a game changer. We’ve halved our energy bills and now have an electric car which links into the solar panels. We had a 4×4 before because where we lived was quite remote.”

Having completed a renovation project, the couple wanted the convenience of a new build and chose a detached Windsor with three en-suite bedrooms.

They found making their specification choices “super easy” with the support of the Castle Green team.

“We love it. We’re obsessed with it. We couldn’t be happier. It really is easy living. It’s a really good build quality. We’ve been blown away by it. We’ve reported some minor issues using the customer portal Willow and the next day there’s been a knock on the door from someone from Castle Green to fix it,” Chris said.

“We’ve been decorating, have added media walls and still have a little bit of work to do but it’s just putting up wallpaper rather than knocking down walls, adding insulation and plastering.”

Current availability at Trevalyn Place includes a choice of four-bedroom homes, priced from £459,995.

Located on Rossett Road, both Chester and Wrexham are only around 15 minutes’ drive away, giving residents the chance to embrace rural village living with easy access to the amenities of the two cities.

The show homes at Trevalyn Place are open daily from 10am to 5pm. For more information see here.