Hello Everybody!

As I promised here we are for the second part of our To Do List for a Perfect Home Made  Christmas Party.

Recap…

In previous post (Christmas is Coming 1!)  I showed the importance of the menu for the dinner, the importance of the table and its decorations. Today, I’ll talk about the house’s decorations necessary for a perfect Christmas atmosphere for our party!

Let’s start from the To Do List:

1. The right Date;
2. The Invitation cards;
3. Menu;
4. The dinner table;
5. Good ambient;
6. Gift zone;
7. Games and activities;
8. Gift for the guests.

5. Good Ambient

Christmas’ atmosphere is warm, joyful and enchanting… For a perfect result we must stimulate all the senses…

• Hearing: think about how joyful are the Christmas songs…. We should make a big playlist that run all over our party. Is a good idea alternate classic songs and Christmas movie’s soundtracks. Michael Bublé, John Lennon, George Michael, Cascada, U2, Queen, Aretha Franklin, Enya and also Smashing Pumpkins, Killer and Linkin Park… more or less everybody played Christmas’ songs. We have a really huge choice! If you like something really classic I suggest Andrea Bocelli (Maybe the best Italian singer). I heard him at Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting and he was absolutely awesome, like usual!
• Sight: the lights should be warm and fragile, red bows, garlands and mistletoe everywhere. The main character
  is the tree and eventually the nativity scene. All the other zone and room of the home are a continuum whit the tree. The house is the stage of the tree, under the tree all our gifts and presents;
• Sense of Smell: it’s time for cookies! Why don’t we use perfumed candles that smell like baked sweets and cookies?  And what about french vanilla, cupcake, and chocolate fragrances? There are an huge amount of perfumed candle, my favorite are the Yankee Candles. These candle have awesome fragrances and Vanilla Cupcake is amazing! You have to try! Yankee Candles aren’t actually cheep, but it’s worth it because they have maybe best fragrance;
• Touch: we can leave on the sofa some warm blankets, this can improve the sensation of family home!
• Taste: it’s depend of chef’s capability!

The decorations are actually important, but not necessary expensive! You can make your DIY decoration with your family, your kids or by yourself after a long day at work. DIY works are one of the most powerful way to reduce stress! And at last but not least, in this way you have “Zero Costs Decorations”, more or less. Tiny ball, angels, little cookies, snow balls you can realize pretty much everything! In next posts I’ll show you some of my DIY works for Christmas Holidays.

6. Gift’s Zone

According with the traditions, the gifts and the presents is usually exchanged at Christmas Tree’s feet. For this reason we should make the tree in an appropriate and big room. Pay attention of the gifts under the tree, a tree without gifts is not a good idea, but in this case we can use fake presents, in other words, we can wrap some empty boxes. It’s not really cool, but is a good choice if we have’t yet received enough gift at party time and there are few box under a big tree. What do you think about a fireplace? If you haven’t a real fireplace at home you can make it with some boxes or you can show fireplace images in a big TV. It’s seem weird, but there are some app doing exactly this!

7. Games and Activities

It is important to think about some games and activities to play after dinner waiting the present exchange moment. Classic games can help us! We can have a card game, in my home country play a card game in holidays is like a tradition! But we have a lot of choice: Pictionary, Tabú, Trivial Pursuit and “Who Am I”are good choices. Something really funny? A karaoke it could be amazing especially if some guest sings after a couple of vine glasses!  On the web there are a lot of apps and site about karaoke.

8. Gift For The Guests

It is a really elegant idea! But it is not necessary to add another work for it.  The best solution is to use the placeholder. Each guest is invited to bring home his placeholder to remember our party. We can buy some tiny presents or make them by ourselves. Actually is a good idea a little bag with some cookies baked by ourselves.

This are the steps for a good party for me. I think that a good To Do List is the key for a good organization. There is a lot of work for manage a Party at home, but with a good organization it will be easy and we can prepare most of the things in advance and we can enjoy the party with friends.

The organization of an event follows some steps that are common for any kind of event. Obviously each event is different, but starting from the common schema and adding some steps we can manage and organize any event: a birthday party, company’s party and also our wedding day!

In next posts some suggestions for original presents and some idea for Christmas decorations and some tutorial showing how I made my decorations…

Stay Tuned!

Trick in this post:
 1. Christmas in the air;
 2. After dinner, games and presents;
 3. To do list common for pretty much any event!

Have you already see the first part of this post?

Christmas is Coming 1!