Country Lore: From Greeting Cards to Garden Kits

Here are 16 great gift ideas from the Mother Earth News editors:

• 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. (Search our website for recipes for brewing root beer and other sodas.)

• 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.