h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

and such. I particularly like making those wonderful ornaments/decorations made out of dried citrus stuck with whole cloves, maybe some beads, and some ribbon. Wonderful things.

Also, it's quite easy making homemade potpourri... with it, you can stuff little boxes, cheap plastic shapes, jars, or baskets.

How easy? Well, you can buy some fragrant flowers, use clippings, etc, and then just dry them out (some florists will gladly give you some of their more "undesirables" ... i.e. flowers whose stems might be cracked. You can also throw in some nuts, rind (from fruits) leaves, acorns, dried fruit, roots, whatever you please... Just be sure that they are dried out appropriately; flowers can be placed upside down, in a warm place for a bit, and they'll dry out within a week and a half, or 10 (usually) ; fruits should be dried quite a bit longer, as they contain considerably more moisture.

For the actual fragrance, it is fun to mix and match scents... try out some spices, like cinnamon (very popular for holidays), mace, nutmeg, vanilla, and licorace. Also, you could try some extracts, particularly Orange, lemon, or rum(mmmm). Orange juice and honey work as well...

Or you can use essential oils, like rose, allspice, grapfruit, musk, lavendar, oregano, frankincense, freesia, gardenia, poppy, ginger, heather, hibiscus, whatever is pleasing to the nose.

And that is one of the most important things: make sure it SMELLS good. No sense in giving potpourri if it isn't ever to be used. Also, potpourri should have colour, so don't go about using dead flowers- dry them out proper!

Also, before you start making the potpourri mixture, you should already have chosen what scents you are about to infuse it with- this means trying it out ahead of time, making sure that the odour is pleasant (I can't stress that enough). If you're a bit uneasy about mixing things, and coming up with possible failure, try talking with a florist- they most likely have more than enough experience to go around.

Combining the ingredients is rather easy... just throw all your dried flowers, etc. into a bowl, and add a bit of your oils/ spices. Toss it around a bit, as if it were a salad (yes, btw, you could make edible potpourri, but that is infinitely more complicated), making sure not to saturate the mixture, as this would just make a messy, mulch like mess of a thing.

Books on this topic are available just about everywhere, so have yourself a go!