Here are 15 homemade holiday gift ideas to craft or assemble for family and friends this holiday season:

? Craft personalized greeting cards: use card stock, available from any office supply store and add your favorite photographs, used greeting cards or magazine photos.

? Create themed scrapbooks depicting a favorite vacation, holiday or family celebration.

? Write and illustrate handmade books: Use your imagination to write stories based on personal experiences and adventures. Illustrate the book with photos, magazine pictures or your own hand-drawn illustrations.

? Make home-brewed soda, cider, beer or wine, or give a brewing kit. To learn how, read Brew Better Soda At Home in the December/January 2005 issue of Mother Earth News.

? Simmer some mulled wine or spiced cider for a warm holiday drink.

? Make flavored vinegars using your favorite herbs or fruits.

? Spread cheer with your homemade jam, jelly, butters or breads.

? Share your garden's bounty by giving braided garlic or onion ropes.

? Go Italian with homemade pesto, frozen in ice cube trays.

? Create small sachet bags and fill with dried lavender.

? Tie bunches of dried herbs with a colorful ribbon and add some dried red peppers for accent color.

? Fashion a seasonal wreath from dried leaves, seed pods and evergreen boughs.

? Create 'floral' arrangements of fresh evergreen branches, rose hips and bittersweet vines.

? Tie small kindling bundles of finely split aromatic wood, such as pine or cedar, with red or green cord and arrange in a basket with handles.

? Assemble windowsill garden kits with several attractive small flowerpots, a bag of potting soil and seeds for basil, chives, dill or other popular kitchen herbs.