Deck your home with Xmas cheer

Gone are the days when the outstanding decoration on the Christmas tree was green, white and pink toilet paper, white cotton wool, sweets wrappers and balloons.
Today, the trees are not just the ones you cut from a portion of your fence. There are electric and white Christmas trees sold around town. The electric trees have a rotating spectrum of several colours at the bottom, which reflect back to flakes on the tree causing portions of the tree to twinkle blue, red, yellow, green.
Here are a few tips on how you can decorate the tree, the house, and the dining table (if you are hosting a Christmas dinner or lunch:

Rose Ritah Nalukwago, an interior design consultant at Foot Steps Furniture says where one places the Christmas tree is determined by the size of the living room. A small living room deserves a reasonably small Christmas tree while a large living room can accommodate a gigantic Christmas tree.
When positioning the tree, you could go for the traditional position, that is the corner. However, if you have a large living room, the tree can be placed in the middle of the room to emphasise the tree’s presence. Monica Tino an interior designer at Modern Image says anywhere is okay as long as people can move around comfortably.

Decorations
You can place well wrapped gift boxes or a few cards at the bottom of the tree. “It’s not a must for the boxes to have gifts in them. They can be empty but well wrapped,” explains Nalukwago. She adds that when decorating the tree or house, try to use the traditional Christmas colours — red, white and green.
Too much glitter and several cards on the tree only clutters the tree therfore Nalukwago suggests as long as you have the lights, bells, colourful red, blue, green, golden balls, and the big guiding star at the top, this is enough.

The lights
Tino and Nalukwago also advise that if you have a big compound with trees, you can decorate the trees with lights. When the Christmas tree in the house is decorated with lights, the rest of the lights in the house should be dimmed or turned off to get the full effect of the glow from the tree.

The lights do not all have to go on the tree. They can be lined along the windows, staircase, the corners on the floor and the doors to radiate the Christmas mood. You can also buy a front door wreath or garland which looks like the tree. The door can also have gift boxes at the bottom or a Christmas tree to welcome your guests. If you have children, Enid Turyagyenda an administrator at Innovative Furniture encourages you to decorate the tree with as many attractive things as possible.
You can place nicely wrapped boxes or jars of chocolates or sweets around the living room for your guests to pick at leisure.
Turyagyenda says, “If you have money, you can re-paint the house, change chairs, curtains and put pictures in cute photo frames.”

Using food
You can also decorate the house with baskets of colourful fruits in corners of the house or at the dining table. “Some of the fruits could include bananas, apples, grapes,” suggests Turyagyenda.
She adds: “Besides fruits the food you serve can decorate table on Christmas day.”

Think golden brown stuffed chicken, tomatoes, French beans, coloured rice, green apples, red wine, cookies, colourful candy for the children, and cupcakes, sliced circular cucumber, carrot, watermelon, pawpaw salad — the point is to add colour to the table. One can also opt to put lights on the table or candles to enhance the atmosphere.
Whatever you choose to do, make sure it brings out the cheer of the season.

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