G’day one and all.  As you can see I have been decorating, I started with my web site as I’ll have no time at all on the weekend when I will be up to my eyeballs in tinsel and baubles decorating the house and the TREE!  Oh how I love Christmas time, it’s just like injecting a little bit of majic into your life.   With all this decorating going on I thought I would share with you some of my pre-Christmas preparation ideas.

 

Last year I decorated my dinner table with a Vintage theme, lots of crystal, lace and *silver* ware!  The silver had all been stored in cupboards and boxes and not seen the light of day in years, consequently it was very tarnished.  So how do you get your silver ware back to it’s sparkling best without hours of elbow grease?  It is very, very easy and I am going to share with you the fastest, cheapest and best way to clean your silver ware.  You will need to collect some aluminium tin foil, bi-carb of soda and put your kettle on to boil.  You will also need a bowl, the size of which will depending on how large your silver ware is.  I recently cleaned a silver chain and just lined a tea cup with tin foil, a large candelabra may need to be placed in your kitchen sink.

So lets get started.

Step one - Put your kettle on to boil, you will need enough boiling water to cover your item.

Step two - Line a container with tin foil.

Step three - Sprinkle some bi-carb all over the bottom of the foil place your silver ware on top and then sprinkle more bi-carb all over the silver.

Step four - Pour the boiling water onto the bi-carb coated silver ware.

Step five - Stand back and say “wow look at that!”.

As the boiling water, bi-carb and tin foil react to one another they will remove all traces of tarnish from your silver ware… just like majic!  If you find bits of tarnish still remain just sprinkle a little bi-carb on the spot, pour over more boiling water and push the tin foil onto the spot.  It’s not really majic, sorry, it’s actually just a chemical reaction, but it’s pretty clever!

Did you like that one?  My next tip is going to help you put Christmas trimmings all over your house without needing to hammer nails into anything and when you take the trimmings down you won’t be left with a dirty great hole in your wall. 

 

I discovered these clever Command strips by 3M a few years ago and they are just perfect for hanging things up on a temporary basis.  You can find them in supermarkets and hardware stores and they come in a variety of sizes as well as white and clear.  They will hold a fairly heavy wreath or the lightest tinsel.  When you take them down you keep the plastic hooks and just replace the sticky backing next time you want to use them.  I like to use the tiny clear strips for keeping bud lights in place and for hanging trimmings in places I don’t normally have a picture. 

 

On to my tip on storing your trimmings.  We have a lot of cheap and cheerful $2 shops in my area and they sell huge sturdy gift boxes which are perfect for keeping your   trimmings in order.  I like them as they stack well and make storing the trimmings very easy and next year when I come to get them down it’s not a pain the the rear end.  I have many different sizes and keep the different types of decorations in groups, lights in one box, tinsel in another, all the tree decorations in one (or two) big boxes, table decorations in another etc etc. 

And one final little tip.  If you would like your trimmings to smell lovely, instead of dusty, next time you open the box just place an orange pomander, a scented candle or a draw liner in the box with the trimmings.  They will have eleven months to soak up all that lovely scent and come out smelling sensational.

I just can’t wait for Saturday to come around!  Ho Ho Ho!

TTFN