Go from trash to treasure! Create great craft projects, gifts, and more using ordinary objects you might normally throw away, like old light bulbs, paper bags, discarded glasses, and orphaned socks. This is a great way to recycle many common things around your home, and it saves you money and allows you to use your imagination. Plus, making gifts and crafts is a fun activity for the whole family. Here are just a few ideas.

• Turn an egg carton into a bird feeder. Remove the lid from the carton. Poke a hole in each of the four corners, and attach a string through each hole. Gather the strings together at the center of the carton, then knot. Fill the carton sections with birdseed, hang the feeder from a tree branch, and ring the dinner bell for your feathered friends.      
• Create holiday ornaments from burned-out light bulbs and old holiday cards.   
• Turn old film canisters upside-down and use them as finger puppets. Add features like fabric ears, small googly eyes, pom-pom noses, and whatever else you have around the house.      
• Wrap old drinking glasses with decorative paper to make instant candle lanterns.      
• Transform a cardboard tube into a musical instrument. Fill it with beans or pennies, seal the ends with tape, and wrap it with festive paper.      
• Fashion stray puzzle pieces into a funky frame.      
• Take the art of sock puppetry to a whole new level. Glue pom-poms, buttons, and ribbon onto a sock to make a colorful caterpillar. Cut a pipe cleaner in half, and push both pieces through the toe of the sock to make antennae. Finish by drawing eyes and a mouth with a marker.      
• Turn almost any paper product into gift wrap--try newsprint, magazines, calendars, wallpaper, maps, and more.      
• Recycle an old CD to make a colorful clock.