Every year, all of us decorate our houses for Christmas with a tree, lights, ornaments, and other seasonal statuettes tastefully placed around the house. Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole are playing on the stereo and on the weekends we get a warm fire crackling in the wood stove. The problem is, we're never there to enjoy it. After leaving for work in the morning many are lucky to get home by 8:30 most evenings, and therefore hardly get to enjoy all the decorations we've painstakingly brought out.
Luckily, there are some pretty cool tools that help you customize the web so you can add Christmas touches to sites you sometimes visit at work, like Google, Twitter, and my personal favorite: Facebook.
1. Christmas Website Themes With Stylish
Stylish is a cool and easy-to-use browser extension that lets you customize website's appearance. The changes are visible only to you and you can use whatever background you wish for any of the websites you visit. Thankfully, there are some festive Christmas themes available, which is a very good first step towards getting Christmas to follow me to work.
Stylish is easy to use and it's also completely free. In just a few seconds I was able to add a Christmas theme to my favorite websites and now I don't feel like I'm missing out on the holiday spirit.
Here are some links to my favorite Christmas themes:
Christmas on Twitter:
Christmas on Facebook:
Let it Snow on Google:
2. Christmas Tree Cursor
You've been using the same cursor for so long you probably don't even notice it anymore. That being said, for just a few weeks out of the year you might want to use a more seasonal cursor. Sites such as Cursors-4u offer thousands of different cursors, including a Christmas tree. After a few clicks with it you won't be able to forget "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas..."
3. Christmas Desktop Backgrounds
Changing your desktop background to something more seasonal is probably the oldest and easiest way to decorate your computer and make it more Christmassy. If you don't have any good personal Christmas pictures just look around on Google images, StockSnap, or Unsplash—you can download some beautiful backgrounds and replace your current one in just a few clicks! Here are instructions for Windows and for Mac.
4. PiKKado Gift Exchange
While so many people have friends and families scattered across different parts of the country or even the world, exchanging gifts can be difficult at Christmas.
The Christmas spirit is all about giving, and this great online gift exchange platform by PiKKado makes it easy to set up a gift exchange between friends, colleagues, or family members all over the world.
You simply create a group of participants using either the desktop website or mobile app, set the rules (such as Secret Santa), and make the draw. A neat feature is that each participant in a PiKKado gift exchange can submit their own list of gift suggestions, ensuring that you won't be left scratching your head wondering what to buy someone if you end up drawing them in the exchange.
As we wrap up 2016, these 4 tools will help you easily customize the web while getting you into the Christmas spirit. In fact, you can use them all year round, customizing your computer and browser for whatever season or holiday is coming up.
Do you think a particular tool is missing from the list? I'd love to hear your feedback.