Christmas Shopping 2006

This Christmas shopping guide will give you some great ideas for presents and decorations to buy during the upcoming festive season, together with some other ideas that will help to make Christmas 2006 one to remember.

How to make a Christmas Wreath

Making a Christmas wreath is really not at all difficult and is lots of fun. Here is a quick guide to making one for decorating your front door during the upcoming festive season.

1. Purchase a "grapevine". A grapevine is a preconstructed structure on which your wreath decorations will be mounted, made from grapevine or other natural materials.
2. You may want to choose a colour scheme for your decorations, such as red and gold, or gold and silver. However, if you just want to use all the shiny objects that are to hand - then go for it - it will still look delightful.
3. Initially, I like to decorate the wreath with real pine, but artificial will work fine if you are unable to obtain real pine. The pine is attached either with wire (wrap the wire around the pine twigs then wind into the grapevine) or strong glue. Another option is to use holly, especially if you can get some complete with berries. You could also add other seasonal vegetation such as ivy and mistletoe.
4. Pine cones can be attached either with wire, glue or pipe cleaners. You can either leave the cones in their natural colour, or it can be fun to spray them gold or silver using spray paint. (If you do use spray paint, it is easiest to spray the cones on newspaper outside, to avoid the mess indoors and to ensure the spray paint is used in a well ventilated area.)
5. Other decorations which you can consider adding include tinsel or lametta, ribbon, Christmas baubles, holographic shiny things, glitter (place glue on the area of the wreath that you want the glitter to appear then sprinkle away - remember with glitter a little goes a long way, so try not to overwhelm your wreath with too much.)
6. If all of the above just seems like a bit too much trouble at this busy time of the year, you can always buy one and pretend that you made it. Interrose have a beautiful selection of handmade Christmas wreaths from £14.50 for one decorated with pine but nothing else (so you could add your own adornments if you wanted to).

USB Christmas Tree
What better way to be festive than with a USB Xmas tree? Check out this one for just £9.99.

RedSave
- Oh yes, everything here for a very merry Xmas. Gifts for him and her, romantic gifts (a golden rose, a talking silk rose), hi-tech gifts (laptops, satnavs, ipods), golfing gifts, a black scorpion paperweight and even trampolines! There is so much on this site a bricks and mortar version would fill a warehouse. Worth a look.