Although I’m sure many retail stores will hate to see this, you do not have to buy decorations for your home this holiday season. There are plenty of natural decoration options that will look just as festive as those fake silver trees.

If your yard is filled with pine trees, then there are probably lots of pine cones lying around your yard. Pick up the pretty ones, as well as some pine fronds and use those to decorate a mantel or table. You could also wrap them around your mailbox or put them over your front door.

The pine cones would also look great by themselves on a dining room table.

Fresh cranberries look festive when you float them in a water-filled glass dish with sustainable candles.

If you like the green and red combination, why not decorate with green and red apples? You could create a pretty centerpiece that’s also edible!

Make an orange pomander ball out of an orange, whole cloves and a ribbon. Just poke some holes in a fresh orange and stick whole dried cloves in them. This site recommends rolling the ball in spices, which I’m sure would make it smell even better!

I’m a big fan of the whole edible decoration idea. We’ve never made a gingerbread house, but I’m thinking that might be a fun new tradition to add to our holidays.

Here’s a link for some other great green holiday suggestions.

Do you have any cool ideas for green holiday decor?

Two trends definitely seem to be catching on right now, going green and saving some green — and it’s not that hard to do both at the same time.

Over the next few weeks we’re going to do a series of posts detailing the different and inexpensive ways you can go green.

Did you know that a bottle of distilled white vinegar can practically erase your need for any other household cleaners? This humble bottle can be used to clean counters, microwaves, ovens, dishwashers, mirrors, windows, coffee pots, and carpets. It can be used to get rid of odors and even be used as a fabric softener!

Since there are so many ways to clean with distilled white vinegar, I’m going to highlight some of the super-easy ways I clean with white vinegar and supply links to dozens of other uses for this miracle cleaner.

I regularly use distilled white vinegar to:

1. Clean windows and mirrors. The key to leaving no streaks or trails of paper towel bits is to use newspaper or those brown paper towels supplied at some gas station bathrooms. It’s easiest to put the vinegar into a spray bottle and use as you would any glass cleaner.
2. Clean countertops, stoves, sinks — just about any household surface. Use white vinegar in place of your regular countertop cleaner with paper towel or dish towel. Again, it’s easiest if you put the white vinegar in a spray bottle.
3. Clean tile, linoleum or vinyl floor. Just use as you would your normal floor cleaner.
4. Clean a coffee pot. Pour white vinegar into the water reservoir and run it without coffee. You will need to run it once more with water before making a new pot of coffee.
5. Freshen the air. We left dirty water in our steam cleaner once, and managed to make a lot of mildew. After a deep cleaning of the steam cleaner (and a very thorough drying) we couldn’t get the smell to budge from our closet. I put a bowl of undiluted white vinegar on the floor of the closet and after a few days, the smell was gone!

Here are some links to other suggestions for white vinegar. Some of these are new to me, and I can’t wait to try them out!

· Vinegartips.com — This list is very thorough! I plan to use their suggestion to clean up messes made by our pets. They recommend using a vinegar/water solution instead of straight vinegar. Straight vinegar works fine for me, but if you want to stretch your vinegar or can’t stand the smell, then I suggest mixing it with water.
· 25 Ways to Clean with Vinegar – A lot of her tips have to do with laundry and stains. This is a great resource for those of us who are messy!

And just for fun, you can use a solution of white vinegar and salt to clean pennies. This was very entertaining to me when I was a child. I would put the yuckiest, green and white corroded pennies in the bowl, and they would come out shiny and new looking.