Christmas is just a few days away – the time to party with your friends and family is getting closer each minute. To help you get that Christmas feel into your place, here are some tips to decorate your house in preparation for the Christmas celebrations.
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1. An Instant makeover
You don’t need to hire an assistant or a professional carpenter or painter to decorate the interior and exterior of your house. A lot of us are usually busy decorating the inside of the house than the outside. If you plan to decorate the outside of the house, paint your house with the colors: white, red and/or green. This way, your house would look neat, new and ready for New Year, too. Re-use those series lights and other decorations from last year. Who cares?! It’s the spirit that counts.
2. Have a Sale
Remember to give love on Christmas day. When you start planning to decorate your house, look around your house. If you have those furniture or clothes you wouldn’t need anymore, you can put them on a garage sale or donate them to charities. If you live in United Kingdom you can access frn.org.uk or furniture re-use network. You may earn that extra cash and extra warm feeling this Christmas.
3. Free Christmas Cheer
Before even buying an artificial Christmas tree or decorations, try to check around your family, friends or neighbors if they are giving their spare or old decorations away. There are sites like ilovefreegle.org and snaffleup.co.uk where people are putting up their stuff for free of charge. Every item is free of charge, you just have to get the first before anyone else does. This is just the solution you would need when you’re short in cash and in furniture.
4. Defrost your Freezer
Prepare to defrost your freezer as early as now and might as well prepare for Christmas day. It would take about a whole day to defrost your refrigerator. You might be able to encounter a bargain or on sale groceries and the stash all of the food in your refrigerator which wouldn’t fit with all that hard ice still inside. You can think of what you would want to cook and think of what suitable ingredients you would buy before Christmas day.
5. Just DIY
A bit of here and there chores you haven’t done in the past few weeks or months? This is the time you would be fixing all the broken stuff at home. There might be some furniture around the house that needs to be fixed like that wobbly chair or the loose nail on the chair. Think what the guest would be doing or where would they be sitting. Even the leak on the sink needs to be fixed or even the bathroom might need a little scrubbing.
6. Replace Essentials
Essentials for Christmas are the decorations or furniture, lights, a place to party and food. You can have your party in a restaurant where they have Christmas decorations or private rooms. It is about time you need to replace those dead or blinking lights outside or inside your home. Try to check again and again in advance if there is anything wrong with your appliances because you’ll never know when your oven or cooker would break down. You don’t want to spoil your Christmas just because of that, brand new ones are expensive so it’s worth having a look around for a sale or be on the lookout for second-hand items. There are online auctions like clearance-comet.co.uk where they auction dishwashers, refrigerators, televisions and others.
7. Snug and warm
Quick and easy trick to stay warm inside the house is maximizing the effect of radiators. You will need to cover your walls with a layer of reflexive foil that would prevent the heat from disappearing and sends the heat back into the room. Don’t worry about the light reflection, you can have lights near the foil dimmed and have a candle-lit dinner instead.
8. Make sure it’s covered
All the expenses you get to spend during Christmas include: food, electric bill, presents and heater. Just make sure you also include insuring your house this festive season. Some insurers automatically increase it over the Christmas holiday but it is always safe to double check.
9. Protect your loved ones
Have your family and house insured for safety purposes. According to direct line insurance a lot of house fires increase significantly over the Christmas. You can also get a free safety alarm by your local and rescue service. You’ll also be given lots of fire safety advice about your property. It’s very important to ask your closest fire department for the safety measures.
10. Safe drive, drive safe
The roads might be covered with snow and it’s going to be very chilly and dark. Clear up your part of the road and the sidewalk for your guests to park and walk their way to your house. Remember to take safety measures in skidding around unexpectedly.
11. Your home is your castle
If you’re planning to go away during the Christmas, make sure your house is secure. Making sure that the garden fence is properly placed and that there are no loose boards or holes in the fence. Having a security camera is not a bad idea but you would spend some cash for this. Lock away your tools placed outside the house or the storage. Make sure all the windows and doors are locked down and secured. You paid a lot for your property and furniture so be sure to take extra measure in securing them before you leave.
12. Don’t advertise your absence
Last but not the least, never ever announce in a social media network such as Twitter or Facebook that you’re going away. You would never know a stalker might invite himself into your house. The worst is your friend who desperately needs money or hold a party and would jump into your house for an open house party.
That’s it for this year, we’ll see you again next year, 2011. A very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Global Real Estate Guide team!
Source: http://money.uk.msn.com/christmas/articles.aspx?cp-documentid=151226253
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