Decorating for Christmas can be an overwhelming task, but the Dallas County Extension Office is prepared to make it a little less daunting.

The office will be offering a free holiday decorating workshop Tuesday, Dec. 2 at the Selma-Dallas County Public Library in the Vaughan Room from 1 p.m. until 3 p.m.

“We try to offer some type of workshop around the holidays,” said extension coordinator Callie Nelson. “This one is on table decorations — creative ways to decorate your tables for the Christmas holidays as well as how to make bows and things that help reduce the cost.”

Workshops have been held in the past but have focused on teaching guests about ways to prepare food or baked goodies. This will be the first time that the workshop will focus on decorating.

“We’re going to show a PowerPoint presentation of a lot of creative table decorations and go over all of the information on place settings and stuff like that that,” Nelson said. “There will be some things that they can make themselves, things that they can use that they already have around their home.”

Sallie Lide-Hooker, a regional extension agent, will be teaching the workshop and sharing her expertise in decorating.

Guests will also have the opportunity to learn how to make a Christmas bow from Lide-Hooker and will be able to make one to take home during the class.

Although the class is free, the office is asking that anyone wanting to make a bow bring their own spool of ribbon, which Nelson said can be purchased at mostly any dollar store.

“One thing I like about it is it helps people to kind of start thinking that they don’t have to spend a lot of money to buy all of the fancy decorations,” Nelson said. “It’s really good to be able to show people these different things that they can do to help cut down the cost but to also personalize their own table settings and table decorations.”

According to Nelson, the workshops get people in a festive mood, and people always seem to have a great time.

“It just helps get people in the holiday mood,” she said.

For more information, call the Dallas County Extension Office at 875-3200.