Decorating!  Yeah that's right - decorating.  Sometimes the best materials for holiday crafts are close at hand:  twigs and bean pods that might be strewn around the yard, and evergreen boughs off the trees.  You can use them to make decorative rustic wreaths or swags to use on the porch, patio or indoors.  Pick up a metal wreath frame from any craft store and place your boughs in a decorative pattern, securing them with craft wire.  Pick up pine cones or bean pods and decorate the wreath with.  Fill empty garden pots with evergreens, pinecones and feathers.  Don't leave your garden containers just sitting empty all winter long.

Shopping - You think the nurseries in your area are closed for the winter?  No way.  They have wonderful plants like corsican violets or pansies still available to fill your garden planters with.  Consider the corsican violet for a blue purple viola tha survives extreme heat and cold climates.  This perennials is perfect for planters, or rock gardens.  Look at your local nursery or order online.  Pansies are cool season annuals that bloom from late fall through winter.

Select a "living" Christmas tree.  It looks great indoors during the holidays and then you can transplant it from the garden container to the garden soil when finished with it.  Arizona Cypress is silvery blue and attractive.  The Blue pyramid grows in the shape of symmetrical pylon 25 feet tall and 12 feet wide.  Just plant in full sun and provide ample water for the first season till well established.

Now is the time to adjust your watering schedule.  Even if you have drip systems in all your decorative pottery, you need to increase the number of days between watering time.  Make sure the standing water is absorbed and doesn't freeze or your pottery is going to crack.  Lastly, you need to move cold sensative potted plants under covered porches or below some kind of canopy.  Don't water any cacti or succulents and protect the truck of any citrus trees with burlap or similar material.