However you celebrate the holiday season, it should be a safe and largely stress-free environment for you and your loved ones to enjoy. Sadly, this is often not the case, as Christmas it is in fact the time of year when most accidents occur. While there is no way to ensure total safety at this or indeed any time of the year, there are many simple steps you can perform in order to avoid the chances of causing a Christmas calamity.

Here are a few simple but efficient measures you can perform in order to avoid accidents, and prevent some not-so-merry mishaps:

• Avoid dangerous situations when shopping: If you're planning a trip to the shopping centre either in the lead up to Christmas or during the sales, be sure to stay hydrated and do your best to avoid over-crowded areas. Obviously you won't be able to avoid crowds altogether, but try to use your better judgement to stay out of situations where crushing could occur. You should also avoid rushing if you can help it, as you could easily slip an injure yourself in the cold and damp conditions.

• Don't overload plug sockets: Fairy lights are a much-loved element of Christmas, but please be mindful of attempting to recreate the huge displays organized by your local council! An extension lead or socket should not use more than 13 amps or 3,000 watts of energy, so be sure to check the specifications of all your electrical items before use. These days there are lots of battery and solar powered options available for indoor and outdoor use, so this may be worth considering to reduce the number of plugs.

• Don't leave open flames unattended: Candles and open fires are a part of the traditional Christmas ideal, but they should always be treated with caution! People are 50% more likely to die in a house fire at Christmas than at any other time of year, so make sure that you are not leaving flames unsupervised, particularly around cards and paper decorations. On the same note, be sure to buy the correct batteries for any electrical items that have been purchased as gifts; you shouldn't be tempted to remove them from your smoke alarm!

• Use the proper equipment when reaching for something at height: When decorating your home or removing things from the attic, please be sure to use the proper ladder or step required for the height, do not use chairs and stools!

• Take care in the Kitchen: Be sure to keep children away from hot water and cooking fat, and avoid the consumption of alcohol when cooking. Also ensure that everything is properly cooked and in-date before serving, to avoid food poisoning.

• Keep Christmas plants away from children, animals and vulnerable people: Mistletoe, orange berries and the Christmas rose are all poisonous, so be sure to keep them out of harms way, or avoid them in favour of faux versions if you can.

• Be extra wary of choking hazards: Small parts from broken ornaments, packaging, crackers and the like could be lethal to small children, so be on the lookout for any stray items in their reach.

• Don't drink and drive: It may seem like a rather obvious point to make at any time of the year, but at Christmas people are more likely to relax and loose track of how much alcohol they've consumed, or are more willing to take risks on Christmas Day because they expect the roads to be quieter. Please use the same caution at Christmas as at any other time of the year to stay safe and well!

Please share these tips on Facebook and Twitter, to ensure safety for all this Christmas!

You can follow us @LabelSourceUK and find our Facebook page here.

We at Label Source don’t just specialise in warning signs and labels, we also supply businesses with a large variety of printable labels:

Laser and inkjet printer Labels

We stock a comprehensive range of printer labels all suitable for use with an inkjet laser printer or a photocopier. Our printing labels come in a wide variety of shapes, from small rectangles to circles, we are confident that we have the exact printing label that you are looking for, and they come in packs of 500 sheets making these labels super cost effective!

Fluorescent A4 Printer labels

We have a staggering 21 different label sizes available within our fluorescent A4 Printer Label Range. With a permanent adhesive bond you can be confident that these labels will stay in place one fixed. Supplied in packs of 100 sheets these versatile labels are also suitable for use with a standard inkjet laser printer and photocopier.

Industrial Grade Laser Labels – White

These industrial grade labels are waterproof and weather, heat and chemical resistant. These labels are ideal to be used as equipment markets, asset identification, maintenance labels, testing labels, racking and shelf labels and more! These versatile labels have a clear acrylic permanent bonding adhesive, and are available in packs of 25.

Polyester labels starter packs

These labels are suitable for most mono and colour printers and photocopiers. Available in 3 colours, white, silver and yellow, these labels are waterproof, weather, heat and chemical resistant and can be used for indoor or outdoor application.

Cable Marking Labels

With 5 colour block options these durable polyester labels are colourfast, waterproof, abrasion and chemical resistant. These high quality labels have a coloured printed block with a  clear wrap around tail, and self-laminated protection. These cable wraps can be printed on with your inkjet laser printer, photocopier or hand written. If you need printable cable marking labels you need not look elsewhere.

Click here to view our full range of printable labels.

Here at Label Source, we pride ourselves on our truly comprehensive range of fully customisable printable labels. In the unlikely event that you cannot find the labels that you require, you can contact a member of our customer service team on 0800 3761 693 or email us on info@labelsource.co.uk.

Christmas is know to be the busiest time of the year for traders, with everyone ordering presents and festive accessories for their homes. It can be a chance to inspire real loyalty in your customers, by providing a reliable service during a time of year when everyone is a little more stressed and eager for things to arrive. On the other side of the coin, it can also be an extremely risky time for retailers, who have to deal with a heightened volume of orders, making the process more time-consuming and problematic to deal with. 

To ensure that your shipping process is as efficient and error-free as it should be this Christmas, it's important that you stock up on the right set of packaging labels, in order to maximize your chances of delivering the best possible service to your customers. Here at Label Source, we have a variety of packaging materials to aid the process, allowing you to advise the correct delivery instructions for the products in a clear and concise way.

At Label Source we stock:

• Instructional Shipping Labels - Our Shipping Transit Labels give clear instructions on how to handle goods, in relation to the movement and storage of the items contained. We also provide Heavy Duty labels to withstand troublesome conditions.

• Visual Handling Instructions - Our Packaging Handling Labels give purely visual instructions, for easy comprehension. Alternatively, we also stock Self-Adhesive Packaging Labels without visual symbols, with short and concise phrasing.

• Dispatch labels - These labels give clear and easy-to-read instructions regarding the contents of a load, as well as its position in the ship cycle.

• Packing Tape - We stock a range of high quality packing tape with a selection of instructional messages to choose from. 

• Packing and Shipping Stencils - These stencils display many of the same messages as the labels, but are reusable and work particularly well for large items such as wooden crates.

To shop out entire range of Packaging Materials, click here.

As you will have already noticed, we've been placing an increased focus on the subject of UK road safety over the past few days, in order to help spread the message about Road Safety Week. In Northampton, a primary school has also been getting involved in this week's activities, by breaking the world record for the number of high visibility vests worn in one place. More than 1,500 people, including the pupils at the school, crammed onto the school yard in order to smash the previous record of 1,475 people, setting the bar for the next group of people looking to take on the challenge.

While the main aim of the day was to aid the promotion of Road Safety Week, it was also an opportunity for staff, pupils and local residents to pay tribute to one of their former pupils. 13 year old Sophie Bywaters was tragically killed whilst crossing the road upon returning from a youth club back  in 2009, an accident made even more heartbreaking by it's preventable nature. Members of the local police as well as the fire and rescue service were also in attendance at the event, not only to aid in the record attempt, but also to give various presentations on road safety. A number of informative activities took place later that day, including a road safety signage competition for students, with the winning designs being chosen for use on international infrastructure group Balfour Beatty's sites. There were also live demonstrations with safety vehicles and fire safety appliances, in order to aid the illustration of vehicle blind spots and proper safety procedure.

It's extremely inspirational to see how this school has managed to encourage interest in the topic of health and safety, by presenting the information in a fun and engaging fashion. It is vitally important that we inform the most vulnerable members in our society about these issues, and ensure that they are fully aware of the safety procedures that should be followed at school, at home and on the roads. This comes from providing good quality and easy-to-read information, in the form of engaging activities such as this one, and of course in the form of good quality safety signs. 

To find out more about Road Safety Week, visit the Brake website.

  To browse our range of high quality health and safety signs, click here.

Label Source supply an extensive range of labels for use in recording maintenance of equipment, plant and machinery, which are relevant for whichever type of maintenance system adopted. The ranges include our maintenance labels, maintenance tags, aluminium foil labels, write and seal labels, and equipment status labels and tags. Also, many others are produced to customer specification to include company information and inspection criteria.

So as part of your maintenance regime use these label and tag products to assist in safe maintenance practices for your workers and the environment, to provide lower process downtime through equipment failures, more efficient use of resources, and enhanced product quality.