The festival of lights calls for decorating

Happy Hanukkah. Michele Rohrer-Lauer of Michelle's Interiors in Grayslake offers some last-minute decorating tips.

• Since this is especially a holiday for children, get them to make a personalized place mat for each guest. This way you won't need name cards and can still seat everyone in an arrangement that enhances conversation.

• An inexpensive way to wrap gifts is to start with blue cellophane, then spray paint twigs and pine cones silver for decorations on the package. The silver treasures would work for a centerpiece, too.

• Pin, baste or tie blue, white, silver or gold ribbons on tablecloths, napkins, vases or chairs to make your regular table top decor work for Hanukkah.

Hang a fragile reef or acre on their tree

The Nature Conservancy is all set up with e-cards for your favorite recipient when you give a gift of planting trees or rescuing a coral reef.

Projects that your gift can support include planting a billion trees in the Atlantic Forest, which has been reduced to 7 percent of its original size in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Other ideas include conserving the Palau reefs and several programs for adopting threatened acres, including four choices in the United States.

The holiday gift site also has an interactive map for those of us who are unclear about where the Republic of Palau and its incredible reefs are. (East of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.)

A gift of $50 or more also includes a one-year subscription to Nature Conservancy magazine.

Here's a box worthy of storing treasures

Sometimes when we put off shopping until the last minute, it's because we just haven't found something special enough.

Connie and Bill Witte will help with that if you stop into Sunflower Home & Garden at 1169C McHenry Road (Route 83), just north of Checker Drive and not far north of Lake-Cook Road in Buffalo Grove.

Many of their products for indoors and out are nature inspired.

They range from trays, glassware, vases of all kinds and countries, candlesticks and candles, birdbaths, small statues, weathervanes, lanterns and soaps.

If you're looking for a gift for me, I always love boxes. This one is $105, but less expensive gifts are available, too.

Call (847) 634-7373.