Tips of The Season

Family holidays and hotels don’t always go together, as the kids like to let off steam. It is usually better to be flexible when you have children and camping holidays suit many families. You can have a meal when you want and the kids can make friends with other kids on the campsite. No one minds a bit of noise, as long as they are tucked up in bed at a reasonable hour.

If you get bored, it is just a matter of cleaning up your camp site and move on to somewhere else. Children like to be given some responsibility and it teaches them self-reliance to be given basic tasks to accomplish. They could fetch the water, help to cook a simple meal or organize games to keep younger siblings entertained.

In my home country of England, campsites tend to be a bit rough and rugged. You may find one on the corner of a field that a farmer uses. The farmer’s wife may sell milk, eggs, bacon, bread and butter. If there are any toilet facilities, they will be basic. The more commercial campsites with their own tents have better facilities and there may be a shop or a children’s playground. Perhaps they have improved, but ones I visited years ago did nothing to encourage camping holidays. The toilet block was dark and dingy and there was nowhere to wash or dry clothes.

My family and I went to France with our two young children. The campsites there were excellent. The toilet was very clean and well lit and all the facilities were top rate. The tents themselves were spacious and had everything a family could wish for on camping holidays. The kids had a great time and the adults; mostly British, Dutch and German organized inter tent boule competitions. When the kids went to bed, exhausted and happy, the adults got the wine from the cool box and chatted and relaxed. We even babysat for each other so we could go into town and have a meal.

The children had their own courier, who would take them off for a nature walk or do some painting with them. Each tent had a barbecue outside and we used to slap on steaks and burgers. The bread man came every day to the site, selling freshly baked baguettes and croissants.

Of course, sunshine always makes camping holidays go better and this was reason enough to give up on camping in rainy England. A coffee and a croissant in the sun is a much better way to start the day!

I am not even done digesting our Turkey dinner and I see Christmas decorations already getting setup, on the short drive home from my parents house.

You see, here on my block, people seem to keep putting up bigger and brighter Christmas decorations every year. Holiday decorations are anything but subtle here in the burbs. Christmas lighting will sometimes take up the whole yard and burn up countless kilowatts of power.

My neighbor Jim, for example, has a lighted inflatable snowman, a glowing reindeer carousel, and dozens of other lighted displays as well. So this year, I thought that I would get more involved. I wanted to go for a touch of class, using an understated Christmas display. That is why I decided to go to the local store and pickup some miniature Christmas lights.

Of course, I have been using miniature Christmas tree lights for years. I like to create a multi-tiered effect by using lights of different sizes and colors. I have a small strand of white light bulbs at the back, a smaller Christmas light strand halfway down the branches of my pine trees and some miniature Christmas lights near the tips of the limbs.

It does take a little while to set up, but the effect is gorgeous. I have always had one of the best Christmas trees in the neighborhood, even when you don’t factor in my impressive collection of Christmas ornaments.

Putting up the miniature Christmas lights on the outside of my house, however, seemed like a much bigger challenge. It wasn’t that it is hard to put up Christmas led lights on the roof — they are no harder to put up than any other strand of lights. The real challenge was doing the light display to create the maximum effect. I really wanted to create a look that would be noticed.

The key to a good miniature Christmas light display, after I found out after spending a few hours tinkering with different configurations, is to go for something understated. A lot of people decide to buy tons of miniature Christmas lights, believing that the cumulative effect will be more impressive than using fewer strands of normal lights.

However, in my opinion, if you are going for sheer volume and impressiveness, just use the normal lights! With miniature Christmas lights, subtlety is the key. Trace the outline of your house or make a few simple holiday designs, just keep it simple. The display will be less over the top, which makes it more magical, somehow.

Anyone can do bigger and brighter. It takes a little bit of creativity to do a more sophisticated display using miniature Christmas lights.

Your typical American will spend hundreds perhaps thousands of dollars on Christmas gifts. Even during lean years, you have to get a Christmas present for everyone. Although few people admit it, most people at one point or another look for cheap Christmas presents. Of Course, you don’t want anyone to know that you are getting a cheap Christmas present.

You want your present to look expensive, valuable, and exclusive. Nonetheless, if you can save a lot of money on Christmas gift ideas, it can really help you out in the new year.

One of my favorite solutions is to make homemade Christmas presents. A lot of people don’t realize how many fascinating, thoughtful presents can be easily made at home. You can make frames for photos, beautiful collages, organizers, shelves — basically, almost anything that you would want to buy someone, as long as it is not high-tech. Since it is homemade, it has that personal touch to it that your friends and relatives will truly appreciate.

Not everyone is crafty. A lot of people just never spend that much time making things, and may not even know how to go about it. For these people, making cheap Christmas presents at home is simply not an option. Another good suggestion for finding cheap Christmas gifts.

One of the best things to do is to buy closeout and overstocked items. Often, you can get high quality clothes, furniture, books, and other products if you are willing to choose based on price. You can save even more money if you’re willing to buy your cheap Christmas presents online. The earlier you start, the better. After all, the price is bound to increase when it is getting towards Christmas time!

Another way to save money on cheap Christmas presents is simply to agree about it ahead of time. Most people don’t like doing it this way, but some families do. One year, me and my sisters were all broke.

We decide that we would all get each other cheap Christmas presents. We agreed on a spending cap and insisted that no one went over it. This meant that no one had to feel bad for spending too much or little money.

Everyone felt happy about the gifts they got and the gifts they gave, and it was a great Christmas holiday. I was glad that we decided to talk ahead of time.

Success as an entrepreneur or manager in almost any business means building great relationships with people.

It doesn’t matter whether they are employees, suppliers, contractors, advisers, customers, or anyone else who has some influence over how your business will do. Having a strong relationship with your network of key business supporters makes a big difference.

If they want you to be successful it means they will go just a little step further for you when it really counts. Enough people doing that for you can add up to a very big business advantage.

Relationship building is most effective when it’s personalized - when the other person really feels you like them, and that you do appreciate having them as part of your life. How many people in your work life can you name who you really feel do value having you as part of their “team”? Most of us start to run out of names as we run out of fingers.

We might know and work with a lot of people in our business lives, but how many connect with us at that special emotional level that will inspire us to go that extra mile for them when times get tough?

When you deal with a lot of people in your business it gets hard to squeeze personal time into the daily rush to build strong relationships. The rush gets worse for most businesses around Christmas. Sure, you will do the rounds of Christmas parties, and probably throw one or more yourself. You will talk to a lot of people, and make contact with many more with Christmas cards, telephone calls and emails. But, for most of us, the Christmas rush is not a great time to build and reinforce close personal relationships with the most important people to the success of our business. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

So how do you say a meaningful and personalized thanks to these important people in your business life? And do so in a way that they will appreciate and remember all year?

You want these people to feel they have a very special relationship with you, something more than other people. You want them to believe you really do care about working with them. Just a party invitation, a message or a box of chocolates is what everybody else gets as well - it’s appreciated, but it may not be “special” and “personal” enough to make them feel they are part of your inner circle of key relationships.

A Christmas holiday corporate gift basket with a personal message delivered to the person’s home sends the kind of message you want. It’s something special, more than just another token gift, but not excessive. It’s personal because it’s delivered to their home and comes with your personal message. The person will realize that not everyone is going to get a delivery from you like that, only the people who are very special to you.

The contents of gift baskets are often gourmet food items that appeal as little luxuries that add to the holiday celebrations, and are much appreciated by the person’s family. When family members comment that you must truly value your relationship with that person to send a special Christmas gift basket, this often reinforces the message you want to convey.

Sending personalized Christmas corporate gift baskets to the most important people in your business support network is easy to arrange in the Christmas rush, and a cost effective way to communicate how you feel.

When it comes to buying for coworkers, some companies have different rules in place. Some don’t like employees to exchanges gifts while working at all, and prefer they do so outside of work. Others are more lenient, and leave it up to the workers. What can be even harder is when a boss has to decide what he wants to do for his employees around the holidays. Most companies want to do something, and will give a gift to each employee regardless of religious affiliation. They are more of a bonus for the year, but are given in the spirit of whatever holiday each person chooses to observe. This means finding a good holiday business gift idea.

What someone chooses to give employees for a holiday business gift idea depends on the budget, of course, and what type of business someone is running. If you have a small business, and your employees don’t make a lot of money, they always appreciate a little extra cash in the paycheck, or a very useful gift certificate for something like the grocery store, or any other place where they may buy things for their families. You can find many great ideas along those lines if you look around.

When your employees earn more, you can get a bit more creative with your holiday business gift idea. You can always find some sort of gourmet food gift to give out to those who give their all each year. These can include wines, choice cuts of meat, and many other food options that a person would not normally eat on a daily basis. Not only can they try new things, they might be able to take a night or two off from cooking. You can also give out restaurant gift certificates to a nice place nearby.

You may not realize there are hundreds of other ideas out there. One of the best places to a find holiday business gift idea is to do a search online. One rule of thumb is to keep the gifts a bit on the impersonal side. You should never get things that might seem a bit too close to home when buying to keep the relationship on the professional level. Some employees wouldnít bat an eye at something that might be considered personal, but others might be uncomfortable. Stay on the safe side, and donít worry, there are plenty of ideas that fall within those guidelines.

In the family I grew up in, we did not really put a premium on presentation. As a matter of fact, we tended to neglect it altogether. For a holiday like Thanksgiving, for example, we would go pretty all out with the food. We would have two or three different kinds of relish, turkey, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, a salad, and plenty of other gourmet grub, but we would never bother to go all the way and make a Thanksgiving centerpiece.

Even simple to make Thanksgiving table centerpieces were beyond our limited holiday preparations. I can not say why exactly, but for some reason or other, it did not seem important to us. That is why I was so surprised and impressed the first time I went over to my girlfriend’s family for the holidays.

They had an absolutely gorgeous Thanksgiving center piece. It was the perfect expression of the joy that the autumn season brings. The table was decorated with gourds, stocks of maize, and woven straw scarecrows holding little Hershey’s kisses in their hands. It was kind of silly, but it was also adorable.

What really amazed me about that meal was how much having a festive decor really added to everything. It really made it a much better day for all of us. The room was bright and cheerful, with little gourds scattered around to symbolize nature’s bounty, and because of that, we were bright and cheerful as well.

The next year, I decided that I would make my own homemade Thanksgiving centerpiece. I thought it would be hard, but it really was not. In general, Thanksgiving centerpieces are just a matter of assembling a few different elements. You don’t really have to make anything at all - all you have to do is to arrange a few things. I decided that a pile of gourds was a must have. Inside of that, I put a bouquet of flowers mixed in with a few stalks of corn. It was not quite as polished as the Thanksgiving centerpiece at my girlfriend’s home the year before, but it still looked pretty good. All in all, it was quite nice for a first try.

Since then, I tried to have table center pieces at all of my holiday events. I’m going to make a Thanksgiving centerpiece this year, but I think I’m going to go a step farther. I can hardly wait to assemble a nice Christmas centerpiece for the first time. I’m already coming up with some really great ideas for that perfect thanksgiving centerpiece, for next year.