Decorating a yule tree is always fun, and one of the things that makes it fun is making your own decorations. Here's an easy and exciting way to cover your tree in garlands that are colorful and sweet-smelling, and after the holidays you can put them in your garden to feed hungry little birds.
Take a length of strong, waxed thread, about one yard or one meter long, and thread it through a sharp, heavy needle. Make a knot at the end of the thread, of course, and sew on a string of such delightful things as popcorn, whole uncooked cranberries, small pretzels, tiny pinecones, dried fruits such as apple slices, lemon slices, and orange slices. These can be sliced thin and dried slowly in your oven, baking them at about 250° Farenheit, until they are dried and rubbery. This process may take several hours, but the results are fantastic. You can also add large acorns & nuts to your string, but you will have to soak them overnight in water to make them soft enough to thread a needle through.
Make as many garlands as you like, to fill your tree or to drape around a small centerpiece. After the holidays, you can give them to the birds in your garden rather than just throw them away.

This is lots of fun! Take two cups of plain flour, one cup of salt, and 1/2 to one cup of water Mix the salt and flour, then add the water in a little at a time until it is the consistancy of real cookie dough. Next, sprinkle flour on your work counter and roll the dough out with a rolling pin till it is just over a quarter of an inch thick. Then cut out holiday shapes with your cookie cutters, bake at 250° Farenheit for an hour, or until they are dried, but not cracked. Cool them for an hour. While they are cooling, gently poke a small hole near the top of the cookie (but not too near the top), using a chopstick or toothpick. The chopstick makes a bigger hole, which is better for stringing.
Now it gets interesting! Using water-based hobby paints, paint the cookies to make them look like they're covered with frosting. When they are finished, spray or coat them with an acrylic sealer. string the hole with red or gree ribbon, and let dry thoroughly.
When the cookies are done, you can now hang them on your tree or arrange them in a holiday centerpiece. You can also tie them to gift packages and make nametags out of them. If you use them this way, don't forget to write the name of the person you're giving the gift onto the cookie with a sharpie pen, and spray it with an acrylic sealer.

After making all those cookies that can't be eaten, every hobbit will be asking himself, or herself, "Where are the cookies I can really eat?" Never fear, they are coming!

The most basic of all cookie recipes is so very simple. Start with two cups of unsifted, all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup of sugar (or Splenda), 1/4 teaspoons of salt, and 1/2 cup of real butter, softened. Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl, and mix well. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Place in an airtight container and refrigerate. The mixture will keep for up to two whole months, and this is the foundation for almost all of your holiday cookie baking.

When you're ready to make cookies, bring the batter to room temperature before using. This recipe can be doubled or tripled as needed. Roll out the dough on a flat, non-porous surface, lightly sprinkled with flour (be sure to spread flour on your rolling pin, too. Cut out holiday shapes with your favorite cookie cutters, place them on a cookie pan, lightly greased. Oven should be preheated to 350° F, and bake about ten minutes, until golden brown at the edges. Don't let them burn! Be sure to cool completely before removing them from the pan, otherwise the cookies might break!

Of course, you have to have icing for such cookies! My favorite is a recipe from Hobbiton, sometimes called "Mad Baggins' Icing" since it was reputedly picked up on the infamous travels of Bilbo Baggins. Sinply take the whites of two large eggs and a pound of sifted confectioner's sugar. Splenda can substitute for sugar. Mix the eggs in a bowl until they become frothy, then add 1/4 cup of sugar and beat it in. Add the rest of the sugar, and beat it until it becomes very thick, and can hold a little peak. Cover this icing with a damp paper towel so it doesn't harden too soon, and spread it on the surface of the cookie. If you want special colors for your icing, mix smaller bowls with red, green, or other food colorings. You can add baker's sprinkles and eatable decorations, then allow to harden. Delicious!

A variation on these cookies is not to use frosting at all, but to divide two equal parts of the dough. Drop red food coloring and a peppermint extract into one part of dough, and mix. Roll the dough into long strips, and twist them together. You have just made candy cane cookies! Now, bake them as any other holiday cookie, as described above.

The other big cookie favorites are gingerbread people! You start as always with the basic holiday cookie recipe mix, but this time you add a third of a cip of light molasses. Also add a half-tablespoon of baking soda a half-teaspoon of ground cinnamon, a half-teaspoon of ground cloves, a half-teaspoon of ground ginger, a half-teaspoon of grated nutmeg, and approximately three tablespoons of water.

Preheat your oven to 350° F, and lightly grease two baking sheets. Combine the cookie ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and beat (low speed) until the mixture forms a dough. Divide the dough into thirds. Working with one third at a time, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1/8 of an inch. Cut out cookies with gingerbread-man shaped cookie cutters, or any other favorite cookie shapes, and transfer them to your prepared baking sheets. You need to bake them for only about eight to ten minutes, until they just began to brown. You may ransfer them to wire rack to cool, using a spatula so they don't break, but sometimes it is best to let them cool on the sheet before removing them. Decorate with icing and favorite candies. Red cinnamon candies make good red noses, silver balls make good buttons, and two rasins are traditionally used as eyes. About three dozen cookies can be made from each recipe.

Now you can have cookies to nibble on while you make cookies to hang on yout tree or garland.

If you knit or crochet, you can make your own six-pointed snowflake doilies, but many of you will probably run down to the market stalls and buy small, beautifully crocheted doilies. These make the most perfect indoor snowflakes, and there are two ways of making them. The simplest way is to stiffen a single doily with laundry starch, sprinkle it with glitter, and hang it with a hook. There is,however, a much better way of doing it.
Take two identical doilies and "sew" them together with a silky white wibbon, leaving an opening at the top, about an inch wide. Take several cotton balls, and spray them with spray glue or an acrylic spray. Sprinkle lightly with gold, silver, or preferably white glitter, and let dry. I like to use white glitter since it gives an "icy" look to the snowflakes. Fill the doily pocket with cotton balls, and tie the ribbons at the top to make a hanger loop. Hang on your tree or on a garland.

Artificial snowballs make beautiful tree ornaments as well as decorations for a glass bowl or other display. To make the best snowballs, you will need strong thread, a large stury needle, a variety of white foam balls in different sizes, white glitter or white glitter spray, and a can of spray tree flocking. I strongly recommend a small, expendable knitting needle to stick in the underside of each ball, because you will have to thoroughly spray each ball with a heavy coat of flocking. After completely covered, either sprinkle or spray the ball with glitter. Let it dry completely, then thread the needle and push it through the ball. That done, make a backward loop and let the needle come back through to the other side. It should appear where you started, and you can tie the ends together. Now you have a hanging snowball, and you can repeat this as often as you like with as many snowballs as you wish. It's that simple.

One word of caution - make hanging snowballs no larger than three inches in diameter, otherwise you may have trouble getting the needles to go through! If you want much bigger snowballs for other decorating purposes, then just leave off the business with the thread, and arrange the snowballs in your winterland display.

A tabletop snowman was something my mother made when I was a little hobbit lass, and he lasted for many seasons. Traditionally, she filled a large mixing bowl with powdered Ivory snow flakes (the entire box!) and added warm water, a little at a time, until there was a soft-but-solid soap mixture. She rolled it into balls of different sizes, then stacked two or three on top of each other to make "snowmen". To finish the illusion, you should sprinkle white glitter into the mixture to give the "snow" and icy appearance. WARNING...this is a very messy prject, but the end results are worth it.

Now you finish the snowman. Twigs make very good arms, and buttons make good eyes. A nose can be made from a red button, a colored bead, or even a pebble. Pebbles or beads make good coat buttons, and a kitchen knife can be used to draw a smiling mouth. A scrap of colorful cloth may be cut in a narrow strip, and draped around the snowman's neck to give him a scarf. Use your imaginations and crafter's resources for additional decorations, and make as many snowmen as you like, in a variety of sizes. Display them on a flat wooden sheet of your own choice, painted white, and with white cotton liner. Big snomen make lovely centerpieces, and small ones fit wonderfully in your miniature village. After the holidays, store them in an airtight box, and keep dry. If no moisture gets inside, the snowmen will last for several years.

Miniature villages are charming ways of decorating your Hole for the holidays, and there are many ways of building them. Over in distant bree, beautiful miniature houses are made from porcelain, and artifically lighted. This is certainly an acceptable way of doing things, but it can also be very expesive. Yet long before these beauties came into being, Hobbits of the Shire were making miniature villages from next to nothing, and loved them every bit as much.

One thing that works very well is to take little empty milk cartons, half & half or whipping cream cartons, and clean them out, making sure to scrape off the waxy surface with a kitchen knife. Spray them with any white undercoat paint, then paint them as little houses. You can display them with miniature trees and tiny figures of every kind. The more unusual, the better. A small mirror makes a wonderful iced-over pond.

The only problem is, such little houses look like the ones in Bree or Rohan or other places where humans dwell, and we Hobbits really prefer to make our miniature villages look like our own.

So here is the secret to making a miniature Hobbit Village! Buy some sizable foam balls or coconuts and cut them in half. The coconut insides can be eaten or used in baking, and the foam balls can be used in numerous other crafts.

If you are using coconut shells, you can either use paint or green crafter's moss to cover the dome, leaving a bare space in the front. Scrape off as much coconut fiber as possible, then paint on the round door and windows. If you are really ambitious, you might actually cut out the windows and put small lights inside.

If you are using foam balls, again cut a large ball in half, then take a very sharp knife and sheer off one side of a half-ball that will become the front of the miniature hobbit hole. Be sure to paint the ball with paints designed to use with foam balls, or they won't stick very well - and worse, you may discover your ball has shriveled up into nothing! Then you paint and decorate your "hobbit hole" as you choose.

For a wintery look, spray the tops of your "hobbit holes" with tree flocking spray.

To display them, use a properly-sized foam sheet, about an inch thick. You can build up around your little holes with either paper maché or carpenter's foam, and if you use hollow coconuts, you can stick holes through the foam board, underneath the dwellings, and insert little christmastree lights.

Just add miniature trees, animals, figures of people, and even a mirror for ice skaters. Enjoy!

Spice balls are wonderful - not only as tree ornaments and holiday decorations, but they also make delightful gifts which can last for a very long time. The ingrediants are simple ones: one orange or lemon, a good supply of whole cloves (I cannot say how many to use, because each spice ball is different.), a box of straight pins, a toothpick, and one yard of red or green ribbon, or maybe a decorative raffeta twine.

THE ORANGE: The first thing you must do is wrap the ribbon around the orange, crossing it into four sections, and pin the ribbon in place with the pins. Then, with the toothpick, pierce the orange in neat little rows with the toothpick's sharp end. Press the clove stems into the little holes until the whole orange is covered. Try to leave the loop about a foot long.

THE LEMON: This time, you use will want to use a good, decorative twine rather than a ribbon. Thread your large, sturdy needle and stick it through the ends of the lemon, and loop it back, the same way you make the snowball ornaments, described above. The rest is the same, and the only reason you may not want to use the ribbon is because you would need a wide ribbon to support the lemon when it hangs. A ribbon would take up too much of the surface space that you'll need to stick the cloves into.

When the spice balls are done, and still covered with sticky fruit juice, roll them around in ground cinnamon, which will make them smell even nicer. Hang them to dry, at least for twenty-four hours. The harder they dry, the strionger and sweeter the aroma. This is a project you need to start early, then, to make sure they reach that stage in time for the hoildays. That's why I make mine right after Trolling Day

A perfect finishing touch is to tie small cinammon sticks, old hickory nut balls, or mistletoe into the hanging string or ribbon. Very festive, very nice, very aromatic.

Herb balls can be made two different ways. The first (and the easiest) is to take a green florists' foam ball, run your large needle through the center, threading it with strong decorative twine. Next, take white glue and coat the ball. Rollit around in loose herbs such as rosemary needles, bay leaves, and other whole, dried herbs until you have a thorough coat. Hang and let dry. Very simple.

The second way of making herb balls is a little more complicated. You will need a medium-sized terra cotta garden pot with a favorite herb, such as rosemary, already growing in it. Place a sharp- ended dowel into the pot, possibly painted green or gold, with the sharp end facing up. Next, take a six-inch foam ball, decorated described above,and stick it onto the sharp point of the dowel. Push it down about halfway. Twine the rosemary plant around the dowel, tying it into place with ribbon or decorative twine. With assorted pins, shape as much of the rosemary as possible to the face of the ball. A healthy plant will shape itself over time to this little topiary. Likewise, you can train a rosemary to grow around a rounded topiary trellis.

Every hobbit has terra cotta clay pots in their garden, and the very small ones make very pretty holiday bells that can hang in your garden year round.

The first thing you do is get together the pots, anywhere from three to six, each of different sizes. You can spray them gold, but I prefer to leave them their natural colors. Arrange them so that they can fit one inside the other. Take a large jingle bell and tie it to the end of several strings of strong fiber ribbons or decorative twine. Now thread the twine through the hole in the smallest put, and make a large knot above the pot's bottom. Leave a pace of about an inch, then make a second knot. Thread the twine through the hole in the second smallest pot, then knot it again on the other side of the hole. See the pattern? now, repeat the process until all the pots are threaded, each pot slightly bigger than the last.

When the pots are all threaded, make a big loop at the top of the twine and knot it tightly and securely so that it won't come undone. You now have a charming set of garden bells that will decorate your garden for a long time to come.

Since many Hobbits like to decorate an outdoor trea with wild birds in mind, there are several very nice homemade birdfeeders you can make. You will need a big bag of wild bird seeds, a jar of peanut butter, some wax paper, a long strong needle, and some sturdy thread. Fill a large kitchen bowl with bird seed, and drop into the bowl two or three large spoonfuls of peanut butter. Knead the seeds and peanut butter into a thick paste and make it into a ball. Run the needle and thread through the balls, and don't forget to loop it back through so you can make a good knot at the base. Make as many balls as you can, then wrap them in wax paper and freeze them. The next day, take them all outside and hang them in your outdoor tree. This is also a good place to hang those natural fruit and berry garlands, like the ones you may have made for your indoor tree.

Another nice gift for the birds is a terra cotta birdfeeder, amde from three large pots, inverted like the garden bells - only this time, put the largest pot on the bottom and glue the smaller sizes in a tier, standing three pots high. Last, add a large terra cotta pot saucer to the top of the tier, and fill with loose birdseeds or with water.

obbits believe in Eru the One God just as Humans do. And while Jesus did not personally come to Middle Earth, his Spirit was found throughout the story of "The Lord of the Rings". Hobbits celebrate an ancient holiday known as Yule, but everything the Hobbits do to celebrate applies just as much to Christmas.
If you would like to read something about the real First Christmas, then CLICK HERE. You may find out some things that will truly surprise you!

... Daisy Brambletoes