Making your home look festive doesn't need to involve a huge outlay of cash or the talents of Martha Stewart. We asked interior designer Peggie Melnychuk-Millard for a few simple tips to add holiday cheer at home. Read on for Melnychuk-Millard's thoughts on light, texture, colour and a great idea for building a pair of outdoor reindeer.

Enter our contest! Scroll down to see how to win a copy of the plans for building the reindeer.

Lights

With new lighting products continually introduced, it's becoming easier - and more fun - to add seasonal ambiance by creating centres of light throughout your home. The light output and colour of LED (light-emitting diode) lighting is improving, and the price is coming down, making LED choices attractive. As well, LED lights are not hot, so they're especially versatile indoors.

Look for LED stick lights that resemble branches, and arrange some in a large clear vase filled with coloured Christmas balls, or add them to an entrance-way urn filled with cedar and pine boughs.

Ropes of LED lights (lights encased in plastic tubing) are beautiful wound through artificial greenery strung along a banister or curled above your top kitchen cabinets.

For instant drama, add a coloured bulb to a pot light. Try red or green in an interior wall niche, or outdoors in a section of soffit.

Simply replacing some of your knick-knacks with items that reflect light can also be effective. Increase seasonal sparkle with shiny ceramic, metallic and mirrored surfaces.

Colour

While the red and green colour scheme is traditional, a change can be refreshing. No need to pack all those reds and greens away and start over. Keep one of the colours, say the reds, and add new items in an analogous hue like purple, to achieve a rich, harmonious scheme. (Analogous colours are those adjacent to each other on the colour wheel.)

Or go monochromatic, using different shades of the same colour. For example, add lime, apple, emerald or sage to traditional forest green.

Feeling brave? Add a punch of colour with an artificial tree in an unusual shade. A brown tree with all-green ornaments decorates Melnychuk-Millard's office at Go Design Group.

Texture

Heavier textures - both visual and tactile - can up the cosy quotient in a room. Replace your cotton or silk toss cushions with velvet ones. Place a warm woven throw over the back of the sofa - or go bolder with red faux fur. Fill a large basket or bowl with pine cones, and add extra texture to your Christmas tree with sprays of twigs or, for an exotic look, feathers.

Make your own reindeer

Even an inexperienced woodworker can build this pair of reindeer in a weekend. The wooden pieces fit together like a puzzle and best of all, stack flat for storage after the holidays.

You'll get both reindeer out of a sheet of plywood and need nothing else but an electric jig saw, paint brush and exterior paint. Plus the plans, of course - purchase the instructions online at woodstore.net/4footlarrein.html.

Our expert

"We're not opinionated - we just have a lot of good ideas."

That's how Peggie Melnychuk-Millard (Interior Design Technology '96) laughingly describes Go Design Group, the interior design firm she and business partner Tammy Mackay (also from the class of '96) own and have operated in Edmonton since 2003.

The company, which employs two other NAIT grads on its staff of six, is busy with a wide range of projects from office and retail spaces to trendy cafés and upscale show homes.

Contest

This contest is now closed. Congratulations to winner Caroline Munro Walch, who submitted her decorating tip using our Facebook commenting feature. Check it out below.

Thanks to all who entered.