Eco Trimmings

Magazines as Gift-Wrap Bows

Read it and wrap: Turn old magazine pages into beautiful bows for your packages! Cut strips of similar colors for the best visual effect.

Winter-Walk Nature Specimens

Say goodbye to the blinking lights, plastic silver balls, and larger-than-life inflated Santas that have come to mark the holidays. Instead, go back to nature to find your home-decorating inspiration and celebrate the season from its root. Charm friends and family with handmade gifts presented in beautiful, rustic packaging.

Gather sprigs from pine or fir trees, fallen bark from birches, or holly berries and leaves from the woods and yard. Display the native treasures in glass jars on your mantle for up-close observation and appreciation.

Spiced Pomanders

1. With a pencil, draw a pattern on an orange. Try family members' initials or seasonal symbols such as stars.
2. Pierce the fruit along your lines with a needle, spacing the holes about a clove's width apart. (Erase any visible lines left on the fruit's skin.)
3. Insert cloves into each hole. Arrange pomanders in a bowl and place on a table or your mantle.

Rosemary Trees

Use scraps of festive fabric to wrap the pots of herb plants you've grown over the year or purchased — turning them into decorations or holiday gifts that keep giving (as cooking herbs), long after the holidays end.

Recycled-Paper Good-Wish Cards

1. Cut recycled holiday cards or cereal boxes into small rectangles.
2. Punch a hole in one end.
3. If both sides are blank, stamp one side with a holiday print.
4. For the other side, invite guests and family to write notes of thanks and hope.
5. Hang on branches displayed in a vase.

Tree Trimming

Brighten your tree — and lighten your bills — by stringing LED lights this year. They consume up to 90 percent less energy than incandescent models and burn up to 10 times longer. Find them online and at many retail stores for around $20 to $35. This year, purchase a live potted tree instead of a cut one, an option many tree farms offer. Some farms, such as San Diego's Adopt a Christmas Tree Foundation, take back trees for planting in pre-dug holes or for reforesting land that wildfires have damaged. Inquire at your local nursery or check the National Christmas Tree Association for programs in your area

Spice Stars and Drops Decorations

Stars
1.Arrange 3 cinnamon sticks into a star shape.
2. Crisscross 1-mm-thick hemp twine 3 times around the center, and tie end into a loop.

Drops
1. Nestle 3 anise pods in a row and secure with nontoxic glue.
2. Wrap twine around the center of each pod, weaving around each “petal,” and tie the end into a loop.

Snowy Sugar Pinecones

1. Collect 20 to 30 pinecones from the woods.
2. Mix the whites of two eggs in a bowl (enough for 36 pinecones).
3. Drizzle pinecones with egg whites using a pastry brush. 4. Sprinkle with crystal sugar. Let dry for 4 hours.
5. Tie string around bottom, leaving a loop for hanging.

Citrus Slices

1. Cut four unpeeled oranges into rounds about 1/4-inch thick. (Each fruit yields about 6 to 8 slices.)
2. Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 175 degrees for 4 hours.
3. Poke a hole near one edge with a needle and thread doubled twine through to make a loop.

Dough Shapes

1. In bowl, mix 2 cups flour, 2 cups salt, and 1 cup water.
2. Stir, and then knead into a ball.
3. Roll out dough to a 1/4-inch thickness.
4. Cut into shapes using cookie cutters, and poke a hole through the tops with a pencil.
5. Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 20 minutes or until hard.
6. Loop a ribbon through hole and tie a knot.