Happy Holidays!

Entertaining the Elegant but Easy Way

Decorating

Having a well decorated home that exudes the holiday spirit will give your family and friends a lift during this festive season. Strands of white lights for both outdoors and indoors are abundant and economical if you shop early. Other sights and sounds to surround your decorated tree might be potpourri with pine cone, evergreen, cinnamon or vanilla scent, a welcoming bowl of fresh fruit, branches of greenery with red berries, scented burgandy or off white candles in crystal or silver holders.

Be sure to leave your Christmas cards out, displayed on a book case or piano; visitors enjoys seeing them and they add an air of warmth and shared good will. If you have any other special collections, ornaments or antique toys be sure to use them to personalize your Christmas and share your memories with others.

Cooking

Christmas is all about holiday foods also. A plate of decorated ginger cookies on a table, to be enjoyed with cold milk or hot tea, all those special home made delicacies, including the lop sided ones your kids might make, gifts of the heart from your neighbors, or show-off culinary masterpieces from your true baker friends are all a rich part of the celebration.

For something more ambitious, like your Christmas dinner, working women often need all the help they can get, and fortunately help is at hand from your local markets and specialty stores, or the many places you can order, including the Internet.

Today you can order entire meals, ready to serve from many of the best restaurants, in every prices range, in your own city. Even many gourmet restaurants offer complete meals to go which are the same fine quality they serve in their dining rooms. Because they're competing with many fast food commercial places, often their packages, including all the side dishes, are only a few dollars more. The trick is to have a beautiful table setting, serve with the same high style, and -- more important-- combine this with items you've prepared yourself, or friends and relatives have brought , to give it that home cooked, caring touch. After all, who ever said a trained chef couldn't cook as well as most of us? And who has to know?

Entertaining

Holiday entertaining should be a litte special. You should have a long range as well as an immediate plan for entertaining. One excellent goal is to make your home a polished setting so entertaining becomes easier : start to accumulate fine things: silver, crystal, vases and serving pieces. These things needn't come from an expensive department store. They can be found in thrift shops, garage sales or attics as well as at Tiffany's. Also, you needn't do it all at once, but make a list and piece by piece, keep adding to the fine pieces you have.

One reason for this is your own enjoyment and the increase in value this collection will have over time. The second, important reason, is that having fine pieces helps you enormously with your entertaining. An average wine, served in fine crystal, surrounded by sparkling silver, will be enjoyed more and thought of as first rate, which it will be: caring and perfectionism count when entertaining and they definitely get points from your guests. A good meal becomes memorable when presented with the drama and beauty of a fine setting which includes good crystal and china. Remember this is your setting, the backdrop of your social event. When everything is presented with loving attention to detail, your guests will live up to the occassion and be more sparkling, lively and convivial themselves.

During the holiday season, as a special treat you may consider asking your extended family, including great aunts, cousins and their children, to drop by for a family reunion to renew ties. Most of the family will be happy to bring a dish and will feel as if the opportunity to gather is your special gift to them.

Make it a point to entertain. Not only will you enjoy yourself and treat your friends and family, but just the act of entertaining will force you to keep your home better organized and up to a high level of polish and your own conversation current and interesting. That is the real reason why , in addition to enriching your life, nurtuing your relationships and launching new ones, there are many side benefits to entertaining. So, go... relax, entertain, renew, grow.... and enjoy this holiday season!

For some extra help or pointers, go to

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