Coldwell Banker Islands Blog

If Christmas is in your St Kitts Home this year, there is no need to panic . You will find a couple of easy tips for you to follow to ensure your Christmas goes off well without a hitch. Being organized is paramount and to really make it memorable try doing something different to the traditional sit down lunch. As you live in a warmer climate you may even decide to have your Christmas lunch outdoors on the patio. Your Christmas party could be a pool party in which your guests can enjoy a cooling dip in the pool!

Plan your Menu

Ensure you know what you are going to be cooking and that you have organized a day to collect the meat or seafood you have ordered. You might like choose to serve a traditional Christmas feast indoors, or if you are going to enjoy the outdoors with a barbecue, seafood, meat, and salads are a good option. Of course whether it is formal or casual, deserts are always important for guests with a sweet tooth!

Formal or Casual?

Do you enjoy a classic formal Christmas with a fancy meal, making use of your best silverware or perhaps a Christmas outdoors round the barbecue more your scene? Either option is a terrific way to celebrate Christmas and also to spend some time with family and friends. For any formal Christmas decorate your table with candles, tinsel and other Christmas decorations. Set out your good tableware and serve your meal with all the trimmings.

Select the best wines you can buy, with a nice sparkling wine to accompany the start of the meal. If you decide on a casual Christmas lunch turn on the barbecue and prepare some prawns or bake a whole fish. You may even prepare meats on the barbecue. Pavlova is a superb dessert on a warm day, along with a fresh fruit salad, or you can even serve serve Christmas pudding cold.

Decorations

To get into the festive spirit make sure you decorate your home. As well as the Christmas tree decorate the table and hang up tinsel and baubles along with other decorations round the room or yard.

Presents

Know in advance whether your family and friends are giving presents. Some families go all out and purchase presents for every member of the family, others don’t bother at all. If you’re watching your spending possibly organize a secret Santa, where each member of the group buys one gift for just one other member of the family. It should be taken care of some time before Christmas to give each person enough time to purchase gifts.

Digicel is spreading Christmas cheer throughout St. Kitts and Nevis with its “Grab $150,000 in Cash & Prizes” Christmas Promotion. Since the launch of Digicel’s Bigger and Better Christmas Promotion on November 18th 2011, islanders have been literally filling their pockets with lots of cash and walking away with fantastic prizes.
Every Friday since the launch, Digicel customers who have qualified in the Promotion have entered the inflatable Cash Vault for their chance to grab as much cash and prizes as they could in 10 seconds. Lucky customers have qualified by simply topping up their prepaid handsets with $15 or more and collected letters to spell ‘GRABCASH’, paid 50% or more of their Digicel postpaid bill, purchased a new BlackBerry handset with sim card, or activated any prepaid plan or signed up for a new postpaid account.
Digicel has also given customers on other networks the chance to grab up to $150,000 in cash and prizes. Last Friday, on the launch of the Digicel-endorsed “Red Devils” Jouvert Troupe, the Digicel Cash Vault was on location at Fat Tuesdays, where persons with any mobile phone who texted ‘GRABCASH’ to an assigned Digicel number, were randomly selected to enter the money chamber.
Customers have until December 30th to qualify in Digicel’s Christmas Promotion & win for themselves cash, airline tickets, flat screen TV’s, free credit, BlackBerry handsets, restaurant vouchers and other prizes.

Source:sknvibes.com

When you live on the beautiful island of St Kitts Christmas time will always be celebrated in the warm weather the island benefits from, of course for many this is a big difference to the normal Christmas in their home country. So how do you bring on the Christmas spirit in a warmer climate?
Are you considering decorating your home with a Christmas palm tree? You are definitely not alone, this has become a very popular choice for many people living in tropical or beach locations, enjoy celebrating the holidays with a festive beach or tropic theme with your palm tree.

Theme Ideas

When you are decorating a palm tree, there are several themes that you may choose including beach, tropical or nautical themes. If you have decided on the beach or tropical theme then a good way to decorate your tree would be with flip flops, Hawaiian t-shirts, surf boards or sand and seashells and you may even decide to decorate the rest of your home with these types of items also. If you decide on a nautical theme, boats, rafts and fish motifs can be used, good colors for a nautical theme are blue, red and even a little green.

Decorations

Decorating your home for the holidays is a lot of fun especially with this type of tree. Seashells and starfish are a good choice if you want to stay with a white or off-white theme, they are also very decorative items when used in a garland.

Another way to decorate your home with a tropical feel is to make some of your own ornaments, old clear bulbs filled with sand are very effective when hung on a tree.

If you have chosen the nautical theme, using small boat ornaments or sea creature ornaments such as seahorses or dolphins will make your tree look beautiful.

Lighting

String lighting is another wonderful way to decorate for beach, tropical and nautical themes. You can purchase the traditional white colored bulbs or even blue would look great for any theme, and if you want to make the lights even prettier why not hang flip flops, Hawaiian T-Shirts, or surf boards on them.

Where to find Beach or Tropical Theme Items

Christmas accessories for beach and tropical themes are easily found in shops and online stores, as well as at craft events, if you are lucky enough to live along the coast why not go to the beach with the family and choose some seashells to decorate. Whatever theme you choose, your home will be inviting and festive for you, your family and friends to celebrate this magical time of the year together.

This lovely two-storey plantation-style home is located high in the secluded, quiet, and beautiful Hamilton Estate, on the slopes of Nevis Peak at an elevation of about 750ft. The area is well-watered, with resulting lush green vegetation, loaded with mangoes, oranges, and other tropical delights.

Price:$695,000

Read more about this listing

The Beaumont Park Soca Monarch Semi-finals held last night at Carnival Village, saw a fusion of performances by 27 singers. They were broken up into two categories , Groovy and Power, with 16 finalists making their way to the final show set for December 23rd.
In the Groovy category, the eight finalists named were: Cinnamon, Stich In Time, Ali Dee, Nickhail, Shakki Starfire, Queen Anastasia, X-Man and King Konris.
Meanwhile Stitch In Time, Ali Dee and Shakki Starfire will compete once again in the Power segment along with, Fantastic Tunda, Mr. World, Contenda, Mighty Takeover and Mighty Honesty. They will go up against King Konris for his crown. They will be joined by one other lucky performer, who according to the Soca Monarch committee, would join them based on votes from a text promotion to be launched soon, bringing the Power segment final count to 10 performers.
The fans will have the opportunity to text the name of their favorite Power Semifinalist who was not selected by the panel of five judges, to advance to the Soca Monarch Finals.
The show, despite inclement weather last night, managed a great turnout and some excellent performances. In the Groovy segment which was first, persons like Konris, Shakki Starfire and X-Man stood out and were crowd favorites.
The Power segment on the other hand, started off with a bang by veteran Contender and Stich In Time who both had the crowd jumping and waving. It was however, taken down a notch after a few performances as the rain had put a damper on the night.

Source: sknvibes.com

With some degree of obvious enthusiasm, the colorfully-attired students entered the school’s compound anxiously anticipating the moment when they would display their costumes to their classmates. It was indeed a wacky Friday at the St. Peters Pre-School when the regular uniform was ditched just for Wacky Day.
The students made their way to their various classrooms in their costumes. Santa Claus, the Little Drummer Boy, elf costumes, reindeer and even a farmer costume.
Pre-school teacher Trevia Saddler, said that she gave birth to the Wacky Friday idea, while in attendance of one of the institution’s staff meetings.
“It was my idea to come up with a day for the children just to have fun; to take them out of the classroom but to still have a learning environment. One which centers on the Christmas and Carnival theme especially since that season is fast approaching.
“We decided to have a Wacky Friday where we could raise funds and still teach the children about Christmas and Carnival.”
It is true that the institution is accustomed to hosting its Mufti Fridays. However, Saddler explained that the major differences between Mufti Fridays and Wacky Fridays are the educational factor and the theme orientation.
Pre-school teachers ^ who seemed to be having more fun than the children ^ were not left out of the mix and had also donned their creative clothing which were just as whacky as the children’s.

Source:sknvibes.com

THE MASTER PLAN
Heritage Plantation is a residential community of 19 homesites rising to 284 feet on the Scotch Bonnet Peninsula at the southeastern tip of St.Kitt. From dramatic stone entrance columns to the comprehensive Landmark Center, our team of architects have meticulously planned every detail of this special enclave.

Price:$2,500,000

Read more about this listing

When Christmas is around the corner, its a great excuse to decorate your whole St Kitts Home, including the dining room and also the dining furniture too, as a lot of the Christmas celebrations will center around the Christmas feast. In fact creating a festive dining table for Christmas is a big part of the fun of decorating for the holidays.

The traditional colors of Christmas are red, green and gold, which are wonderful colors to produce an effect with. These are also colors that will match with most dining room furniture and decor too. There are many ways in which you can bring your dining table to life for this special time of the year.

Begin with a vibrant colored custom tablecloth of either red or green colors which can be matched to crockery you are going to use as well as the table decorations and the other accessories you choose to decorate your table with.

The centerpiece you choose for the dining table is a very important element. There are many different centerpieces to choose from, you may decide on a wreath with bells and bows or festive ornaments of Santa Claus, Rudolph or frosty the snowman. A traditional table centerpiece which is guaranteed to catch your visitors eyes is an elegant candle display in a candelabra or maybe the candles can be offset with some Christmas greenery, baubles or sparkles, Thick pillar candle lights are usually the best type to use for this kind of setting and creating different levels of candles produce a lovely visual effect. You can purchase a ready made centerpiece with candles, however this will take some fun out of creating your festive setting for the Christmas feast.

Your dining chairs can also be incorporated into your festivities as it is easy to decorate as little or as much as you want, if you are looking for a subtle feel for your chairs why not attach a few ornaments on each or for a more dramatic look a good idea is to take some bright red, gold or green ribbon and attach to the chairs with bows, you can even purchase novelty seat covers in the style of Santa Claus, snowmen, reindeer and many more. This method of decorating your chairs is a simple method to give an intensive festive feel to any dining room.

If you want to decorate the other pieces of furniture in your dining room such as the fire place or the dresser, you may want to create Christmas bowls by filling festively colored bowls with things like pine cones, bells, baubles or candles. Place setting on your table can be offset by using color coordinated china and scattering sprigs of holly, glitter or even have a miniature Christmas tree for each person at the table.

Christmas is a time of joy and celebration and by creatively decorating your home you will really enter into the Christmas spirit and make the holidays unforgettable for you, your family and friends.

Purchasing your first home on the Beautiful Island of Nevis is exciting, but it is also a daunting experience when you move your old things in and realize that both you and your old furniture don’t fill the area or the requirements of a real home. Often, you will have to budget carefully to be able to obtain the products you need but still be in a position to save for a rainy day. It is important to make sure that you purchase quality items where it counts, and only scrimp in the areas which will not affect your daily life. It is essential that you first obtain the things that you need to enable you to live in your home comfortably and build on your furniture and decor in time and at your leisure. Here are a few tips to help you to choose what to buy and when to buy the items which you will need for your very first home.

1. beds are one of the most important items you will buy for your home so it is important that you choose a product that will last. It is not a good idea to purchase a used mattress or an extremely cheap bed as they will only fall to pieces and you will be losing lots of money. Do not choose to buy a head board and footboard no matter how beautiful they are over a quality mattress. You might have an attractive resting place, however the rest you will get on a cheap mattress will not be good enough. If you’re not able to purchase a quality mattress immediately, buy comfortable airbed and sleep on that until you have enough money saved for a good bed mattress. A comfortable airbed will often cost around a hundred dollars, and after you have finished with them they can always be used for any guests you may have coming to stay.

2. Outfit the dining area with a table and chairs which can be used for dual purpose when needed. Dining area furniture can be bought fairly inexpensively at discount furniture stores. Choose a table that can be extended for a game night or for when you have company over, and select upholstered chairs that will be comfortable for visitors should you sit around after dinner. Upholstered chairs are also easily moved into the living space for when you have visitors over and can be easily dressed up with slip covers for seasonal parties.

3. Choose a good solid sofa. Not including your bed, your sofa will be the most important item of furniture within your home and is likely to get the most use. It should to be comfortable, durable and upholstered in nice fabric of your choice. It does not need to match your other furniture as this can be covered easily to fit in with your sofa.

4. Search for deals on chests of drawers and wardrobes. These products are very good for storage and look elegant inside a hall or living space, as well as in the bedroom. If there is a lot of closet space in your home, you may decide to place them in there out of sight to hold linens, Compact disks or movies rather than clothes.

5.Make sure you have enough light. Many houses have bright, harsh overhead light fittings which are helpful when cleaning and when you need to see every corner of a room, however these are not friendly on a daily basis. You can purchase affordable lamps at discount stores and use them to soften the edges of the room without restricting the and causing you to feel like you are living in a cave.

Buying your first home is a very exciting time, however it is important to purchase the basics for your home first and then build on this to ensure that you have enough money and also that you are happy with how your furnishings look together, it is very easy to get caught up in the excitement and impulse buy which will be a disappointment in the long run. Buying a first home is one of the biggest milestones in life so make sure that you enjoy it!

Enjoy the hot tub after a day of hiking, golfing or beachcombing, sip a refreshing drink and watch the sailing yachts on their journeys. Then enjoy the garden view from your recently refurbished kitchen with granite counter tops and top of the line appliances, while dinner is being prepared.

Price:$975,000

Read more about this listing