House looking a bit shabby for Christmas? Friends coming for drinks and nibbles? Dozens of gifts to give and not an idea in your head? Is this you? Do you need help? Well, whatever you do, don't buy an armful of glossy home and decorating magazines for inspiration. Their stepby-step, recipes will give you a headache and, despite what they say, there really is no easy way to dress your presents up to look like Faberge eggs or exploding crackers.

Don't hold back, shrieks Family Circle, why not have the million-dollar look you've always dreamed of? This nightmare scheme involves hoisting a huge garland dripping with spangly balls all the way up your stairway, or looping it round the chimney to create a grade A fire-hazard.

House Beautiful also offers a crash course in making twiggy wreaths and the kind of outdoor decorations that only a pyromaniac could enjoy. Do you really have time to make dozens and dozens of lanterns out of old tin cans and light tea lights in them to blaze a trail to your front door?

Do you really want to transform old bottles into Christmas vases with gold Dutch metal leaf and, while you have it handy, paint it on everything else in sight - cutlery handles, ivy leaves, even bars of soap?

Greenery from the highways and byways is what Country Living advises for the most natural look of all. Deck everything out with it, except for the top of picture frames which is - for reasons unexplained - not at all the thing to do. And what about place settings? Just write people's names on ivy in gold or silver pen. Of course.

"Fill your house with unexpected treasures," trills Beautiful Living, as if you had all day to bundle up cinnamon sticks in silver string, fill decorative chests to overflowing with chocolate coins or make angels from white nylon organza and old hangers.

Gold leaf turns up again in actress Patricia Hodge's book mentioned in Country Homes And Interiors. So while you have it handy, and if you haven't been completely asphixiated by the fumes, stencil the family's names onto simple tumblers and spray some more to make really pretty, individual drinking glasses for Christmas Day. Obvious isn't it.

Then, when you've done all that, have a party. Homes And Garden's countdown to having the Perfect Party insists that to succeed you must start 12 months ahead, cultivating lively and party-loving friends. At the same time you should be researching other essential ingredients - such as ice sculptures. Then 12 days ahead, decorate the house. Twelve hours before, start arranging the food. Twelve minutes before have a drink yourself of this year's party quaff - a grape in champagne. And finally, 12 seconds before, light endless creamy candles all over the house, sunk into tank vases filled with dishwasher salt to anchor them, or pebbles from the beach, or lemons and limes - depending on what: your colour scheme, of course. Got all that?

Or why not have an intimate dinner and intimidate with your table decorations? Nothing could be easier, according to Ideal Homes. For instance, instead of using a flower centrepiece, why not stab thousands of cloves into oranges and line them up and down the table for a deliciously different display.

Once you have all the guests assembled, the festive punch sparkling in the decorated glasses, and about a million church candles blazing in the interconnecting rooms, then for God's sake don't relax. That's when you have to circulate, introducing your guests, making sure those candles aren't setting fire to the gilded hydrangea heads, and above all being on the look out for spillages - one magazine even suggests keeping a damp J-cloth pack, doused in Jiff, tucked into your belt, colostomybag-style, so there's no flustered rush to the kitchen. What your friends think of you wearing a J-cloth about your person, tucked under the evening dress, is another matter.

But do you really want to deck out your house with half the forest. Does any sane person ever really seal her presents with hot wax? Follow the tips in the endless magazines bulging on the shelves this Christmas and you might end up in a much more clinical place - where tablets and bedrest are the order of the day and there's no scope whatsoever for bubbly or canapes.