One of The Other Half's family holiday traditions has been to redecorate their entire houses in Early, Middle, and Modern Christmas. Everything from the knicknacks on the end tables to the rug and hand towels in the guest bathroom is redone in red, green, snowmen, and old-fashioned Santa Clauses. The centerpiece of it all is the Christmas Village.

While some folk pride themselves on collecting all the pieces in a particular name-brand collection, most of these villages are odd collections of pieces purchased from sale racks here and there, or made by friends and family.

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After making those Christmas lights the other day, I got to thinking about what else you could do with the flotsam and jetsam of life with diabetes. A few ideas were:



1. Test strip bottle garland - using fishing line, thread thru where the cap joins the bottle. 100 bottles should make a manageable garland.

2. If you really want to drive yourself mental, make garland out of used test strips. You could either thread them on fishing wire using an upholstery needle or you could glue them together. I have doubts as to whether the glue would hold up for very long, though.

3. Syringe icicles. Snip the needles off (obviously), put fishing line or ribbon around the plunger end and hang on the tree.

4. Syringe icicle lights - using the same Tiny Lights that I used for the insulin bottle lights, string the syringes (again, snip the needles) onto the lights. (READ MORE)