A few years ago when our Starbucks was refilling the bags we accumulated a lot of them, so we made a scarecrow. The bags were great as stuffing for legs & arms plus cut in strips for hair. The hair was stapled on to a flat piece of scrap wood for the face. We did long layers & short bangs to flutter in the wind. We screwed on lids from various plastic containers for the eyes, nose & mouth plus cut some red lid for a better smile. The 6 year old daughter of my niece promptly called it Jessica, the name of our married daughter. We have no idea how she got that idea, but the name stuck. It was fun to have a named scarecrow and the 6 year old went to it right away when she visited us to say hello. It was the funniest thing.

Years ago when I worked in our local thrift store there was a lady who would come at the end of our $1/bag sales and pick out things that we would "give" her. I put give in quotes cuz she gave most of them back in the form of pot holders and shopping bags which we then sold. She took cotton clothing and old towels home and washed them and made things. The potholders have terry cloth towel in the middle. They are my favorite pot holders still more than 20 years later. (I wore out quite a few but still have these.) You can see that I've patched a couple of them. Hers are the first pic, then the second are some I made, inspired by her, from an old worn out towel and some fabric samples. I wish I remembered her name - she was doing this before recycling was so fashionable! and here are mine kathy

As long as I didn't have to clean up the mess of the shredded paper, I didn't mind wrapped. I kind of enjoyed wrapping gifts. But I do think it's a waste of money and other resources. Better to use the comics or something. You can get creative in wrapping. My sister was the first to start using bags and cheapo that I am, I'd save and reuse them. We'd give the same bag back and forth. Now I use the reusable shopping bags more and more for gift bags. It's an extra gift in itself. As far as what I'd prefer to receive? An envelope. Stuffed with cash. Large denominations. As I've said before, THERE'S a thoughtful gift! You may wrap it in money if you want. Or use cash for the tissue too if you like. Christmas is approaching. Feel free to send anytime. It's cheaper to ship too!

Citrus peels do contain a compound that is toxic to worms. It's not a big concern to put a few orange peels in a home worm bin occasionally, as long as they are only a small percentage of the total fodder - the compound does get broken down eventually by bacterial activity and orange peels become part of the finished vermicompost in the long run. However, any large volume of citrus peels in a worm bin is another matter: you could see a worm die-off, and the worms would not be able to process the citrus effectively even with bacterial help. So I would definitely separate out the citrus peels and not put them in the worm bin. (Outdoor composting is fine for the citrus, the toxic compound will disperse more readily outdoors and it's easier for your free-ranging worms to avoid it.) Another precaution to take with a large volume of fruit scraps in a worm bin is to make sure they don't compact down, get concentrated, stay wet and start to ferment - something else that will kill worms. You'll need to make sure there is plenty of bedding mixed with the fruit scraps and that the mixture is well aerated, and that you're not adding too much for the worms to keep up with. Another factor is the design of your bin - wide and shallow is a lot better than deep, because more surface area of bedding in contact with the air allows for better aeration and evaporation of excess moisture. I agree that you probably will not be able to compost this large volume of fruit scraps if you get it regularly, regardless of method. Whatever system you use will get overwhelmed pretty fast by lack of space. It would really be too bad for all those great fruit peels to go to waste! - But maybe you can hook your friend up with a larger composting operation that wants the scraps on a regular basis.