Country Lore: From Greeting Cards to Garden Kits

• Personalized greeting cards using card stock, available from any office supply store. Add your favorite photographs, used greeting cards or magazine photos.
• Themed scrapbooks depicting a favorite vacation, holiday or family celebration.
• 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.
• Home-brewed soda, cider, beer or wine, or give a brewing kit. (You’ll find recipes for brewing root beer and other sodas at www.MotherEarthNews.com.)
• Spiced mulled wine or spiced cider.
• Flavored herbal or fruit vinegars.
• Homemade jam, jelly, butters or bread, with the recipes included.
• Braided garlic or onions.
• Homemade pesto, frozen in ice cube trays.
• Dried lavender sachets.
• Dinner-in-a-jar: soup and quick bread mixes that will keep for many months, with instructions.
• Bunches of dried herbs tied with a colorful ribbon. Add some dried red peppers for accent color.
• A seasonal wreath fashioned from dried leaves, seed pods and evergreen boughs.
• “Floral” arrangements of fresh
  evergreen branches, rose hips and bittersweet vines.
• Kindling bundles: finely split aromatic wood, such as pine or cedar. Tie small kindling bundles with red or green cord and arrange in a basket with handles.
• Windowsill garden kits: several attractive small flowerpots, a bag of potting soil and seed packets of basil, chives, dill or other popular kitchen herbs.

You can find instructions and recipes for many of these gift ideas, along with more do-it-yourself holiday projects, in Mother’s Amazin’ Archive.