Decorating your home for the Christmas season is one of the merriest things to do.
Here are a few helpful hints on how to give the rooms in your home that special Christmas feeling.
Holiday hallways
Do not forget that your guests enter your home from the hallway and they need to know it is Christmas before entering your living room.
n Ribbons, dried flowers, tassles and garlands, all strung together on the hall stairway banister, makes a charming first impression.
n Get your guests in the festive mood with the sounds of Christmas. “Pipe” carols into the hallway and throughout the house. Add extra speakers to your stereo or put CD players in every room.
n Fill the air with the smells of Christmas. In addition to natural greenery in the hallway, prepare bowls of potpourri and let those delicious cooking aromas waft through your home – gingerbread cookies, fruit cakes and plum puddings.
n Place tall branches in an old umbrella stand and decorate with deep red and ruby bows for a Victorian flair.
Holiday living rooms
n Use garlands made up of ribbons and bows to adorn paintings and mirrors.
n Decorate your hearth with nature's finest. Arrange boughs of pine with rosy apples, wine-red berries and holly for colour. Place baskets, filled with giant pine cones and homespun fabric bows, on end tables and coffee tables.
n Decorate your mantlepiece with groupings of short, colourful candles and tall elegant ones, surrounded by red berry clusters.
A Christmas bathroom
n Remember to do some special decorating in the bathroom – it is one place all your guests will visit.
n Display your Santa collectibles on the bathroom shelves, surrounded by sprigs of holly.
n Hang a miniature wreath, decorated with colourful candy and tiny ribbons, over the toilet.
n Drape a set of jingle bells from the towel rack.
n Put out festive hand towels.
n Take down your botanical prints and hang some beautifully framed Christmas cards over the basin.
n Add a holiday scent with candles, incense and potpourri.
Christmas kitchens
n Throw a quilt, done in holiday colours, over the kitchen table.
n An old fashioned cut-glass cake plate will make a beautiful base for a Victorian centrepiece.
n Tie big bows to everything, such as the mop, coffee pot, toaster, broom and microwave.
n Turn house plants into holiday displays by adding decorations to them.
n Do not forget greenery for the tops of your cabinets.
n Berries make colourful pebbles for your holiday flower arrangements.
n Line your cupboard shelves with bright holiday plaid towels.
n Green ivy in terracotta pots are exquisite and festive on the windowsills or mantlepieces.
n Fill your crockery bowls with scented pine cones and apples.
