With just days to go now until Christmas, there is still time to get creative with holiday gift wrapping, using materials we already have on hand or have right outside our doorstep. So often, we buy gift wrapping and boxes only to see them torn apart and thrown away quickly.

This season, try some new ideas instead. For example, turn your cereal and other dry-goods boxes inside out, re-tape them and you have a wonderful gift box. Or, turn your brown shopping bags inside out and use them as a rustic looking wrapping to which you can add fall decorations from nature.

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Ideas for materials you can “up-cycle” from your household include:

• paper shopping bags

• cereal boxes

• popcorn boxes

• shoe boxes

• newsprint

• magazine pages

• burlap or kitchen twine

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• doilies

Ideas for nature decorations include:

• holly

• rose hips

• pine needles

• rosemary

• fur tree branches

• berry branches

• colorful fall leaves

This is a great activity in which you can incorporate kids, encouraging them to think about what is around them that can be repurposed rather than thrown out. You will be amazed at how much you won’t have to buy.