There are virtually thousands of low-cost, creative ideas for Christmas decorating. You can fnd ideas in craft stores, regular stores and in magazines.

We are entering my favorite time of the year. The stores are beginning to gear up for the holiday season. It seems that each year the merchants begin their displays earlier. The major magazines begin to have holiday themes and Christmas decorating ideas beginning in August. It is easy to become overwhelmed with the holiday time. I have found, for me, that the best way to enjoy the holidays is to keep it simple. I try to keep this in mind in everything I do from my Christmas decorating ideas to the foods I prepare for guests.

For several years my husband and I would have a Christmas open house. We invited co-workers, neighbors, friends and relatives. Each year the list of people we invited would grow and so would the headaches and stress of getting ready for the event. I began making homemade candies a month prior to the event. We made homemade candies, cookies, bars and a wide variety of finger foods. I would comb the magazines and stores to come up with the latest Christmas decorating ideas so that each year I would have new displays for our guest to see. We would have so many people in the house that you could hardly move, let alone admire the Christmas decorating ideas that I had come up with. We spent all of our time filling punch bowls, making coffee and replenishing serving platters. We decided that we needed to have a different way to celebrate the holidays with friends.

We looked at the list of people that we invited and agreed that we could eliminate co-workers from the list. We each had holiday parities at work where we could celebrate the season. We then decided that we would have smaller gatherings on three different evenings during the season. This is how we started to keep things simple. We invited neighbors over for one evening, friends for another and relatives on another. We serve appetizers and drinks. I still make a variety of homemade sweets, but now I have a cookie exchange with co-workers at our house. This gives me time with co-workers outside the office setting and also gives me a variety of cookies to serve. I still come up with different Christmas decorating ideas, and with fewer people in the house you can actually see the displays. I concentrate on decorating the trees well. We place one in the living room and one in the family room. I also have candles and greenery arranged on the tables. I also like to use large vases filled with a variety of evergreens along with red and white carnations. Add a few twinkle lights here and there and my Christmas decorating is complete.