Are you tired of the same old boring Holiday parties that everyone else is having? Here are some surefire hits for Christmas parties and other holiday parties with a little more life.

The Cookie Exchange

For this party, each person bakes a pile of Christmas cookies before hand. If there are seven couples or people coming, then each person bakes seven dozen cookies. This way, everyone can go home with a dozen of everyone’s cookies. This cuts down on the baking for everyone and always makes for a fun time.

A Themed Party

Sure, it’s the holidays. But why not have a themed party anyway? This is the time that everyone has to get a little break from work, so make your holiday party memorable by having a themed party. This could be as simple as having a Star Trek party and learning to say Happy Hannukah in Vulcan, or it could be as elaborate as having a Tarts’n’Vicars party. You might even want to have a football party one day and have everyone over to watch your favourite sport.

A Costume Party

A costume party is an extension of the theme party idea. You could allow people to choose their own costumes. You could have a fancy dress masquerade ball, where everyone wears fancy dress but has to have the small masquerade mask too. (These ones are always a lot of fun!) Of course, if you can also have themed costume parties, such as a superhero costume party. For more information on costumes, visit the website below, The Guide to Costumes.

Do some Charity

Why not collect canned goods from your party goers for admission? Or you could have a party where each person brings a small toy to be donated to needy children. You could consider theming your party around such organizations as Operation: Shoebox, where you could each bring in a shoe box with gifts.

A Tasting Party

While we are all familiar with certain holiday tastes, can you and your friends stump each other with food? Bring in your most exotic recipes. Each person has to guess five ingredients from the recipes. The person with the most accurate tastebuds wins a door-prize (often, a recipe book is a good door prize).

You can also have a wine tasting (or beer tasting, or even pop tasting) party. See if your friends have discerning palates by testing out their tastebuds. Often, a beer tasting party is a good time because people think they can tell a lot about different kinds of beer!

In the end, the main rule for throwing holiday parties is that there are no rules for holiday parties! Choose your venue, choose your theme, and choose your entertainment. Why not celebrate a Christmas in July like the Australians do, when they celebrate Christmas six months late (or early, depending on how you look at it), because their seasons are backwards. You can have people over for a tropically themed party. Shrimps on the bar-b, anyone?

Amongst hundreds of research on consumer spending and buying, the holiday season has been declared the time where business boom is expected and where your business can get a lot of exposure to your consumer.

This may be the time where most people would want to spend a cup of eggnog at the fireplace with family members and close friends seizing the cozy atmosphere. This is also the time where people would want to share things to people and give to their loved ones. Thus more and more people would want to give unique personalized gift items that are affordable.

Anticipate the Season

By making an annual business marketing plan you can layout and plan ahead on which part of the year would you want to drive people in. You want to expose your wares and services to as many people as possible in order for them to come back and for you to get that repeat purchase from them.

Months before or by the middle of the year it would be wise to start rolling out the holiday marketing plans to give you a head start on other businesses. This may save you money since the demand is still low. Often business services offer discounts on clients who book them early so this could mean more savings for you.

Promotional Prices and Packages

At the start of the season, it would be wise to do promotional sales and offer discounts to entice more consumer traffic and let those consumer dollars stay on your cash register. Offering it earlier than others may give you a step ahead by letting your market spend their budgets on your wares than those of the competitors or on other gift items.

Giving an early bird discount on gift certificates is another way to ensure that the recipient would go straight to your shop and the best thing about it is that its being paid in advance which means an add on earning even before the item is bought.

Personalized Wares

Since the world is experiencing a slow down in its economy, many consumers now are learning to be shrewd and may want to get every worth of their penny out of the item. It is advisable to carry products that are personalized and reasonably priced. Selling personalized wares gives out the impression of being special rather than pricey.

Holiday Giveaways

This is also the best time to acknowledge your loyal customers and patrons by giving away personalized gift items to them with an accompanying greeting card. This can give the patrons a feeling of importance and would give them a feeling of belongingness to the group instead of identifying them as customers.

Giving out is synonymous with the holiday season. This is why it would be a great way to take advantage of the season where people are willing to pay for something that they might perceive as what the recipient need or wants. Also, this is the time where employers give out bonuses to employees which would mean extra money to spend for the holidays.

When you’ve been working long and hard at your home business for a while, you might feel like you’ve earned yourself a little break. There are home business owners out there who haven’t taken a real holiday since they started their business — including some who started their business as long as five years ago!

After all, how can you ever just desert your business and your customers and go bronze yourself on the beach? How can you avoid being on call 24/7 throughout your holiday? Well, everyone deserves some time to themselves at least once a year, if they want to keep being productive and avoid stress. Here’s what to do.

Tell People When You’re Going Away.

You can’t just disappear when you’re running a home business — you need to let people know long in advance that you’re not going to be available, and make sure that they have everything they need to manage without you while you’re away. It’s best to schedule your holiday not to interfere too much with the business.

However much you might want to have your holiday in the summer, it’s important to remember that every business has its quiet months, and you should schedule your holiday in the period where they seem to be.

Change Your Answerphone Message.

A quick and simple way to let people know that you’ve gone away is to change your answerphone message. This allows you to still hear what people have to say when you get back, and stops them from wondering why you never seem to answer your phone.

A good format for the message is as follows: ‘Hi, this is [your name] at [company name]. I’m sorry I’m not in the office right now, but I will be back on [give a date]. If you leave a message, I will be sure to get back to you’.

Set Up an Email Autoresponder.

Similar to an answerphone message, but less commonly used, is the email autoresponder. Again, you don’t want people to wonder why their emails are going unanswered, so your best bet is to set up your email program to automatically reply to any email you get with a message saying that you’ve gone away.

Example: ‘Hello, and thank you for your email. This is an autoresponder, as I’m away on holiday until [date]. I have received your email, however, and will respond to it upon my return. I apologise for any inconvenience to you, and I am willing to make an offer of 10% off your next order to make it up to you.’ The special offer for people who get the autoresponder is a nice touch — it makes them feel lucky that they emailed you while you were away, instead of frustrated.

Don’t Stay Away Too Long.

Of course, when you go on holiday, you’re relying on people being willing to wait for you. That means you can’t really take the kids to Disneyworld for two weeks, or spend a month staying with a friend abroad — it’s just too long to be away from your business for.

You should regard a weekend away as ideal (it avoids the whole problem for the most part), and a week as the maximum you can allow yourself. Don’t let people make you feel bad about only taking one-week holidays: after all, you could always have more than one each year.

Alternatively: Get Someone to Look After the Business.

If you really want to get away for longer, or it’s essential that your customers don’t have any break in service, then you could consider getting someone to look after your business. This could be an existing member of staff that you make your ‘deputy’, to be in charge while you’re away, or it could be someone who’s related to you and has some experience running a business. You could even hand the business over to a competitor that you’re friendly with and share the profits with them, if you think they’re trustworthy and they could handle it.

Enjoy your holiday!

Holiday-it means a break from our repetitive routine and getting chance to explore the world with joy and joviality. Holidaying is the ultimate one that rejuvenates and revives us from the mundane monotony. But without money, making holiday is merely an illusion. If you have fund, then it is ok. Otherwise, for holidaying you have to look for various options. Though credit card is a good alternative, but its high rate of interest sometimes baffles you. Then what else? You can also opt for Secured holiday loans facility.

Like other secured loans, you can avail secured holiday loans against any of your property, like your home, car etc, which will be used as collateral. With secured holiday loans, you can borrow amount from £20,000-£75,000 and you can extend payments from 10-30 years. Thus, small monthly repayment is possible.

Secured holiday loans are facilitated with lots of facilities. In secured holiday loans, the rate of interest is comparatively lower than unsecured holiday loans and credit cards. Apart from that, secured holiday loans cover all travel related expenditures- from tickets to hotel charges, from meals to miscellaneous expenses. Even, easy availability of secured holiday loans is also an added benefit.

Secured holiday loans are also available for those people, who have bad credit history. CCJs, IVAs, defaults, arrears discharged bankrupts are also considered for secured holiday loans. Though, in that case, rate of interest becomes slightly higher.

However, at the same time you should be aware that secured holiday loans are available against your property. Thus, at first you will have to calculate the amount you need for your trip. Make a budget and try to maintain it during the trip; as if you are not able to repay the amount, your property will be at risk.

Now the question is, how can you apply for secured holiday loans? Needless to say that many traditional lenders, like financial institutions, banks offer secured personal loans with attractive package. Besides, Online option has emerged as a good option for secured holiday loans, as many loan-lending companies offer online secured holiday loans along with useful information about different places, hotels etc.

Without money holidaying is just impossible. But, with secured holiday loans you can make it possible. The interest rate charged on secured holiday loans is comparatively low than credit cards and the repayment terms are very flexible. Even with secured holiday loans the amount you can borrow is relatively high. Thus, secured holiday loans are totally appropriate for a hassle free holiday.