In this holiday season, there are many great alternatives to giving away many heavily packaged and wrapped holiday presents. Below are just a few:

As opposed to giving out several elaborately wrapped gifts, try participating in a gift exchange or a Secret Santa in which you are only responsible for buying one gift. Too busy to get together to do the name picking? No problem - websites such as www.secretsanta.com or www.elfster.com make the name drawing quick and easy.

Additionally, there are many great gift ideas that are creative, economical and environmentally friendly that don't add to household clutter. Many of the following suggestions can be homemade, saving even more money, and you can add your own personal touch to them.

Practical gifts

• Prepaid phone card
• 100% recycled stationery (with postage stamps)
• Calendar (do-it-yourself photo calendars, available through most photo developers, are a perennial favorite for grandparents)
• Beeswax candles
• Gifts in a jar (soup mix, pancake mix, cocoa, etc.), frozen meals or other edibles
• Organic and/or locally crafted (or homemade) bath-and-body products (soap, lotion, etc.)
• Fair trade coffee (add some biscotti for a nice combination)

• Babysitting
• Yard care
• Cleaning
• Automobile maintenance (oil change, etc.)

• Museum, zoo, conservatory, or historical society

• Special outing (see "Annual Memberships" above)
• Art materials (paper, paint, scissors, glue, tape, crayons, fabric scraps, ribbon, yarn, chalk, etc.)
• School supplies
• Homemade play dough (see recipe at www.JenniferSwanson.com/recipes.htm)
• Bubbles
• Stocks, bonds, CDs, or contributions to their college education funds

• Coupon book for environmentally friendly products and services (e.g., Blue Sky Guide or Chinook Book)
• Simply In Season cookbook by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert (this gift won't "disappear," but it does present delicious, vanishing recipes that make the most of the season's freshest produce)
• Charitable donation in their honor (e.g., many organizations promote "adopt-a-something" programs; think about causes that would be meaningful to the recipient--then you take the tax deduction!)

• Buy wrapping paper made specifically from recycled content. You can feel better buying it, and can probably recycle or compost it when you are done. Buying wrapping papers from charity groups involved in saving rainforests will salve your conscience and is a nice gesture.
• Pick up inexpensive rolls of leftover wrapping paper from Goodwill or the Salvation Army.
• Save used wrapping paper this Christmas and reuse it all next year
• Make your own gift wrap from butcher paper, reused brown paper bags, newspaper and the funny pages. These can look GREAT! Try some raffia twine bows with the butcher paper and brown bags, for a pleasant, simple, rustic look. Or get the family together to create your own designs drawn on the butcher paper - use crayons, markers or mixed media. Make a stencil from a potato for the brown paper bags. You don't need bows, and these hand-made offerings are like another gift all by themselves. Best of all, the paper, bags, and newsprint can all be recycled or composted.
• Buy a bundle of pretty gift bags from your local dollar store, and reuse them each year. Tie the handles together with some ribbon so gift-getters have something to "unwrap". These bags come in all designs and look very nice under the tree.