It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Is your home decorated yet? If not, don’t fret.
Now is the time to collect items and ideas that will become your holiday décor. You might even find some of them in your own back garden.
Or you may like to stroll through stores to see the newest themes in the holiday displays and use them in your own. If you’re really creative, you can transform some of your older decorations into newer treasures by using a bit of imagination, a can of spray paint here, a new ribbon there. Whatever the case may be, know that your decorating theme should suit your lifestyle, not what is “in vogue” this year.
This piece is devoted to imagination and creative ideas for your home, no matter what your taste: traditional, French, early American, or contemporary.
There is a little bit of something for every style of decorating. Don’t be afraid to tie in your Christmas decorating with your home’s everyday decor, i.e. pick up the colors in your patterned drapery or upholstered furniture, don’t just follow trends.
For example, if your interior is based on white or ivory tones, you may want to complement it with tiny white lights, flowers, cream-colored candles and natural greenery. Perhaps you may want to add crystals or glass ornaments to give extra sparkle. If your home is in earth tones, you may want to accent with copper and bronze ornaments.
If your tendency is toward jewel-toned fabrics, emerald green, ruby red, gold, dark purple and sapphire blue ornaments will all complement your theme.
If you have a fireplace, your mantel will become the centerpiece, It’s texture, color, balance and style are all factors to keep in mind. For a contemporary look, use repetition and symmetry. Use simple objects and repeat them several times. For a country look to your mantel, gather some branches, strand branches up in a narrow vase or lay them on the mantel. Hang ornaments on them and complement them with natural greenery.
Traditional mantelpieces look beautiful either swaged or layered with natural greenery, traditional ribbons and bows in satin, velvet or taffeta, mini white lights and artificial, sugared fruit picks.
Tip: Don’t try to put everything on your mantel. Pick a theme and stick to it!
Here are a few simple holiday dinner table ideas you may want to try: Fill a glass bowl with water; add cranberries and floating candles and you have a festive and elegant centerpiece. Create festive name tags with bright ribbon or raffia to gold or silver spray-painted pine cones or Christmas ornaments and use as place cards at your dinner table.
Adorn a simple chandelier with ropes of gold, silver or red beads and attach drop crystals.
Scatter the same bead strands or crystals on your dining table. Take some inexpensive dollar store candles and give them an ornate look by puncturing them several times in a random fashion with in- expensive pierced earrings or wrapping them with headbands or ribbons. Place the candle in the middle of the table and surround with twigs.
So as you’re decorating your home for the holidays this year, be creative, have fun and enjoy every moment! Remember, decorate for your lifestyle, not someone else’s.
“Happy Holidays!”
HOMEland Magazine
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to