Christmas is a magical time when every home should look special. Children, getting more excited by the day, love to see the decorations going up, and still more so if they’re able to help. Your festive display will delight your guests when they come to visit, and it will make the season feel more rewarding. People are getting increasingly creative with Christmas decor these days, so what can you do to transform your home?
Christmas Colors
Traditionally, Christmas is celebrated with the pairing of rich reds and greens, accented with gold. Using gold, white and silver together is an alternative option, evoking the sparkle of snow glittering on cobblestones and frost on windowpanes. There are lots of ways you can use these colors in your home. Ribbons and scraps of cloth can be used to add bows to all sorts of features, from door handles to chair backs and banisters. Larger pieces of cloth can be made into festive cushion covers. Strips of colored paper can be looped together to form long chains – a fun task for kids – and hung across the ceilings of rooms. You can also hang up strings like this to hold all the greetings cards that your kids bring back from school, or you can suspend large plastic or cardboard snowflakes from them.
The Perfect Tree – and Friends
The most exciting moment for many children, prior to Christmas morning itself, is the moment when the tree goes up. You can help them to make an angel or a star to put on top of it, using gold or silver card. Tinsel and baubles are great traditional decorations, but you can also make the tree exciting by adding candy canes or by wrapping up tiny presents to hang from the branches. These little treats can be enjoyed throughout Christmas day.
The Christmas tree is a relatively recent invention. Before that, people would often bring a Yule log into the home and decorate that – it’s the ancestor of today’s chocolate Yule logs. They would also bring in branches, and these can be a great way to decorate your mantel or your internal doorways. You can partially spray them with gold or silver to make them look more magical, and suspend baubles from them.
Light It Up
Thanks to LED technology, which means they don’t get hot the way they used to, you can now safely use bright Christmas lights in many parts of your home. As well as decorating your tree, they can look amazing curled around your banister or stretched around your windows. Position them where they’re reflected in mirrors or in shiny decorations to enhance the effect.
As well as small lights, you can make your home look inviting with Christmas lanterns, both indoors and out. Hanging over the door, they’re a great way to illuminate your welcoming festive wreath.
The Scent of Christmas
As well as appealing to the eyes, the festive season should appeal to your sense of smell. Home cooking always smells good, but what can you do the rest of the time? Scented candles are a good option and there are lots of great seasonal versions available. You can use an oil burner to the same effect, or you can simply simmer a pan of water containing a cinnamon stick, a nutmeg pod, a lump of root ginger and some scraps of orange peel. If you don’t have a real tree, add some pine needles to the mix to suggest the presence of one.
Keep it safe
Christmas is a time when there are a lot of candles around, when kitchens are busy and when the cold weather means that fires are built up high. With this in mind, it’s important to be careful that none of your decorations are in places where they could catch fire. If you are using glass baubles you should keep them out of reach of small children in case they break. You should also be careful about pets. Some animals can make themselves sick by eating pine needles, while others like to eat tinsel, which can be dangerous for them. With a bit of thought you can create the festive look you want without putting anyone at risk.
Getting creative for Christmas is one of the most exciting aspects of the whole festive season. Get it right and you will charm your guests, while your kids and young relatives will feel they have entered a magical wonderland.
Photo via: Pixabay
