Do you find the month of December and Christmas an expensive time of year? Does impressing friends and neighbours cost you a fortune? Well it need not because I have been experimenting with some nifty money saving ideas to get you through this difficult time of year.

Blinging your house: Outside bling can be a huge expense at Christmas time. First you have to buy all the lights, glowing, dancing Santas, Rudolphs and snowmen, then you have to pay for the electricity to get them all glowing. Why not simply wait until the house opposite has finished putting up their lights and then cover the front of your house with used kitchen foil to act as a mirror, thus creating that warm Christmassy feel without having to pay for the electricity.

The more enthusiastic handyman, keen on one-upmanship might like to shape tiny bits of foil or used sweet wrappers to reflect the lights of passing vehicles and the Council funded street lamps. This way, no matter how much competitive spirit the owner of the house opposite has, yours will reflect it back with that little extra twinkle. The photo below demonstrates just how much bling a miserly two foot square of used foil can reflect from the house opposite. Just imagine how brightly a whole wall covered in used foil would glow and how Christmassy it would look!

Bringing that extra Christmas brightness to your living room at no extra cost: Those little fairy lights which brighten up the living room all add to the expense of Christmas. Yes, you want a nice bright living room but, 'OUCH!!' the extra load on your wallet.

Did you know that your ordinary, everyday ceiling light can be brightened? That even the flimsiest of lamp shades can reduce the brightness of a bulb radiating at a frequency of say, 20 nanometres by the inverse square root of its thickness in microns?

Why not simply remove the lamp shade for the season. See below how much Christmas brightness we have here in the Wyenot living room from just an ordinary 18 Watt bulb with shade removed, and without a single LED light in sight. Not dusting it first can also give that added 'Good King Wenceslas' snow effect every time you bang your head on it.

Do you have a nifty money saving Christmas Tip? Why not send it in so that we can publish it next week and help keep the Ebenezer Scrooge spirit of Christmas present alive in Ross-on-Wye?