Share your "different" ideas for Christmas here...

[Sparkler]

I like "different ideas" and just wondered what sort of things you do. For example, things to make and do for the Christmas Dinner Table, Ways to Wrap your presents, How to present your food etc etc.
At the moment I'm googling for Napkin folding ideas - I love to make the dinner table special.
May sound sad to some but I like it!

My dd (5) has spent the afternoon with little white cards, gold star stickers and a gold pen making placecards for each guest. DS1 (4) wasn't to be outdone and so I ended up typing up the Christmas menu (a bit like at a wedding) so he could decorate it with more of the stickers and a few indeterminate squiggles. As a recovering control freak it is quite hard, but I like the idea of them 'contributing' to the Christmas table.

This year I've also got a box from Lidl which was £1.99 and contains a couple of tealights plus several gold-sprayed wooden bits e.g. little stars, a couple of little winter-clad figures, some little wooden pegs etc.... haven't decided what exactly I'm going to do with them, but they'll be used in some way to make the table interesting.

Presents are wrapped in usual Christmas paper but I collect interesting little things to go on them, e.g. my mum's has a little tinkly bell on it.

The trees have various decorations on which we've collected over the years, and I always do the cookies on ribbons and dried orange slices.

I know I'm making it sound like some sort of warped 'Good Housekeeping' Christmas supplement and I'll probably have everyone take the rip unmercifully, but please be assured that I do all this sort of stuff INSTEAD of cleaning the house, ironing, reconciling my cheque-book, picking up the drycleaning etc. Not exactly Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife.

misshardbroom - they sound lovely. I'm not a Good Housekeeping reader either but am a bit of a sucker for falling for the little things that make Christmas special and everyone looks at and loves.

DDs have made, coloured in and glittered loads of little pictures this year and I've stuck them all over the dining room walls for all to see when we are eating dinner.

One idea that I must share with you is one that I've done this year and it's fab! I have two daughters and I've bought them new sacks to put at the end of their beds on Christmas Eve. Instead of buying two I've bought four! I have the two spare ones all filled up and hidden away ready to do a quick swap before I go to bed on Christmas Eve. Usually DH and I are rummaging through carrier bags and trying to fill the sacks they put out. It's going to easier this year!!