Whether the sun is shining outside your door, the clouds are gathering, or the snow is falling, we’ve got some fantastic ideas for helping make your holiday merry and bright with Christmas cheer this year.
- Make a sparkling punch for your next dinner party or holiday gathering. Champagne punch is a wonderful way to inject some bubbly holiday merriment into any festivity. Here’s a great recipe to try:
Champagne Holiday Punch
Ingredients:
1 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
3 cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves
2 cups cranberry juice cocktail
1/2 cup pineapple juice
1 bottle champagne
Small amount of Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur
Red and green sugar
Instructions:
In a saucepan, bring water, sugar, cinnamon sticks and cloves to boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Discard cinnamon and cloves.
Cool to room temperature and pour into a large pitcher.
Add cranberry juice and pineapple juice and chill in refrigerator until ready to serve. Chill champagne flutes for extra frostiness. At serving time, add 1 bottle of chilled champagne. Dip the rim of each champagne glass into the Grand Marnier then into one of the sugars. Pour or ladle punch into the glass.
- Recycle imperfect holiday lights. Everyone has a strand or two (or 10!) of tree lights that have one or more nonworking bulbs. Don’t spend your time trying to find the dead bulbs and replace them, recycle that strand of lights to add a little holiday brightness to your front porch or a forgotten nook. Insert them inside a hollow plastic Santa or snowman, and voila!
- Give the kids a tree of their own. Worried about tiny hands and delicate ornaments on your family tree? Pick up an inexpensive tiny tree the little ones can reach, some shatterproof or plastic kid-friendly ornaments, and let them decorate “their” tree any way they like. This way, the children get to be involved in making your home merry and bright without doing damage to those heirloom ornaments you love so much, and it’s the perfect way to showcase all those adorable handmade ornaments and decorations they made in art class.
- Add outdoor wreaths to your home’s windows. This works well whether you have a one, two, or three-story house, and is a great way to create a unifying festive look to the outside of your home during the holiday season. Place a holiday wreath on your front door to tie it all together. Don’t forget to decorate your garage door, as well, especially if it faces the street.
- Don’t forget the kitchen! Don’t just settle for a festive tablecloth and centerpiece for Christmas dinner; do a Christmas kitchen makeover by changing out the everyday oven mits, spoon rests, kitchen towels, cloth napkins, refrigerator magnets, and apron for holiday-themed kitchen tools and accessories. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen during the holiday season, so why not make it festive?
- Use Christmas cards as a decoration. String together all those merry and bright Christmas cards you’ve received in the mail and hang them on the tree or above an interior door to add a pop of color and holiday cheer to any room. This is a great way to enjoy those cards from friends and relatives without cluttering up your desk or kitchen counter. Don’t have a lot of cards this year? Pull out those leftovers from years past that never made it in the mail and add them to your string of cards.
- Choose themed wrapping paper. If you’ve always been a red, green, and silver paper purchaser, why not switch it up this year and go for the brightest, most colorful, whimsical wrapping paper you can find? Use silver and gold garland instead of ribbon on packages. Add jingle bells to the packages for that one whom you know will be sure to shake their gifts trying to figure out what’s inside. Think outside the box and use kid-themed wrapping paper for the adult gifts this year for added enjoyment. After all, everyone’s a kid on Christmas morning!
There you have it; seven ways to make your Christmas a little more merry and bright this year. If you try all the above suggestions and still feel that your holiday needs a little more cheer, throw some tinsel on it! After all, you can never have too much tinsel. From all of us at Current to all of you, have a very merry and bright Christmas!
