Gear up for Christmas

First, choose decorations that are safe, eco-friendly, economical and pretty, involving optimal space-usage. If readymade trinkets seem stereotyped, go for handmade decorations or ornaments. Recycling material and using non-toxic substances make for eco-friendly decorations.

Cheap electrical decorations might mean compromising upon safety. Also, unleashing your creativity unabashedly might make the decor garish.

Adopting a theme for your Christmas party decorations? Say, a particular colour, a Christmas character, love, snow-party, winter-sports or period decoration? Coordinate the invitations, clothes, Christmas tree decorations, music and the menu with the chosen theme.

Place tiny Christmas trees at the centre of the tables you are using. Fashion them out of sheets of velvet or shimmering green paper and sticks, twigs or wires. Decorate them with coloured thermocol balls, shapes, beads, pearls and popcorn-strings.

Battery-operated lights eliminate unsightly and unsafe cords. Modern LED lights are energy-efficient. Place lighted candles out of children’s reach. They must not hinder movement either.

Arrange gift-wrapped cake-loaves in a basket. Fill a clear-glass bowl with toffees and another with colourful chocolate bars. Set these on tables as decoration-pieces. Suspend shimmering sachet-chains of jam-packets and salty snacks from a decorated rod in a corner.

Tie a line of stockings stuffed with cookies and chocolates. Gift the goodies to your little guests. Clear-glass bowls with pebbles at the bottom and red/white flower-petals and fir leaves on the water’s surface make for simple table-decoration.

Tie ribbons that gel with your overall decorating scheme to chair-backs, candlesticks, wreaths, garlands, basket-handles, stair-railings and door-knobs. Though red, green and gold are classic Christmas colours, the entire colour palette is yours. Make fake snow by shredding cotton and adding glitter to it.

For the dining-table centrepiece, cluster white and coloured candles of different heights with smart ribbons tied around them and fir leaves and flowers strewn around.  Tie sleigh-bells to the main door. Place little, decorated Christmas trees on either side. Spruce up the door and windows with any of these - wreath, Christmas picture, teddy bear, flower bunches or figurines or cardboard cut-outs of Santa, stocking, snowman or nativity-scenes.

Decorate the exteriors using light-strings running down from the roof, twining around the garden's trees/shrubs and lining the pathway to the door.