Last Minute Gifts: These Homemade Holiday Items Are Fast, Fun and Practically Free

Six easy ... fast ... beautiful ... fun ... and practically free Christmas decorating and gifting tips! Try these money-saving ideas that are sure to brighten even the most curmudgeonly among us!

It's time for cold weather and winter holidays, but don't let exorbitant energy costs stress out your already stressed-out pocketbook. You can bypass a lot of that budget trauma by starting now to turn ordinary, overlooked items in your own home and yard into holiday treasures and keepsakes. A little time and imagination is all you really need!

* Make pine-cone ornaments - the latest in free and fun tree-time fashions! Any kind of pine-cone will do. Keep a little basket in your car or on your bike, so you'll be ready to scoop up these freebies whenever the opportunity arises. Dry them out on a sheet of tin foil on a cookie sheet in a very slow (170 degrees F) oven, so they open up wide.

Tip: A quick dip in the glitter bowl is all these lovelies need before you wrap a recycled ornament hook around the tip for hanging. If their sticky sap is sparse, or for an overall glitter effect, dot each cone petal with glue before you dip. For an even shinier look, spray with craft shellac before giving them their glitter bath. How festive! And their reflective quality means you can use fewer lights on this year's tree.

Tip: A dozen of your pine-cone ornaments, wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with a shiny red or green bow, make wonderfully inexpensive hostess gifts during the holiday party season. As natural ornaments for your own family tree, they'll last for decades!

* Spare the electricity whenever you can and set up part of your yard or deck or apartment balcony with designs that shine all day. This year:

- Trade out a strand or two of your outdoor twinkle lights for bright red chili peppers, draped from the bare branches of small trees.

- Put collections of odds and ends to work for you while you're conserving electricity. Gather up all those old mittens and winter gloves that have lost their mates. Hang a "clothesline" of twine between two trees, or along a fence or balcony rail, and display your mitten collection, secured with old clothespins painted in bright holiday colors. Your yard will shine on even the dullest winter afternoons!

- Light your driveway, balcony or pathway with luminarias made from recycled plastic milk jugs. Simply cut off the tops and fill each one halfway up with sand. Nestle a tiny tea light into an opening in the sand and let it glow through the night.

* Don't ever throw away a holiday card or scrap of colored paper. Save that shiny foil gift wrap, little colored bits of papers and ribbons, and on an especially gloomy day, cut it all up into little pieces about the size of your baby fingernail. Don't worry about its shape - the stranger the better! Pack it all into little plastic baggies and when the kids or grandkids are in the mood, use it to add spectacular pizzazz to dozens of newly dried baker's-clay ornaments.

Tip: For a really unique look for those uninspired little tree-shapes and plain-round-ornament shapes, cover the clay ornament's face with any color paint or even plain glue, and lay it, still sticky, face-down in a pile of the shiny papers.

Tip: Spray the baker's clay ornaments with artists' shellac and pack a dozen or so of them into an old cookie tin as gifts that will long outlast store-bought ornaments.

Enjoy!