Home(made) for the holidays

HO HO HORTICULTURE A participant trims festive foliage at Wave Hill’s wreath-making seminar.

Photograph: Courtesy of Wave Hill

Christmas Embroidery Class
FREE Sew Fast Sew Easy, 147 W 35th St between Broadway and Seventh Ave, suite 807 (212-268-4321, sewfastseweasy.com). Subway: A, C, E, 1, 2, 3 to 34th St–Penn Station. Thu 14 6–9pm.
Enjoy snacks while you stitch and embroider your own Xmas stocking at this free midtown sewing session. Don’t worry if you’re no Betsy Ross: All materials are provided and the work is done on Brother embroidery machines preprogrammed with a host of festive designs. How big do you think we’ll have to make ours to fit one of those new Kindle reading devices from Amazon?

Holiday Baking Classics
The Institute of Culinary Education, 50 W 23rd St at Broadway and Fifth Ave (800-522-4610, iceculinary.com) Subway: N, R, 6 to 23rd St. Thu 20 6–11pm. $95 .
Why bother with Aunt Ida’s fruitcake when you can bake your own bûche de Noël (yule log), a traditional French holiday dessert made from génoise sponge cake and chocolate buttercream? (Trust us, it only looks like bark.) In addition to going home with their own bûche, participants in this ICE class learn to make flourless chocolate cake, savory gingerbread, pumpkin-pecan loaf, a Breton apple tart and sinfully rich brownies. We’ll hold off on that diet until 2008.

Holiday Ornament Workshop
One Sixty Glass, 160 Berry St at North 4th St, Williamsburg, Brooklyn (718-486-9620, onesixtyglass.com). Subway: L to Bedford Ave. Wed 19 6:30–9:30pm, $70 (materials included).
Those Finding Nemo ornaments you got at the Shell station looking a little tired? Create two or three of your own tree-hangers in this beginner’s glassblowing class and you’ll have heirlooms you can pass on to the grandkids. Dress lightly though—those furnaces get hotter than Heat Miser’s hangout.

Natural Wreaths Workshop
Wave Hill, 675 W 252nd St at Independence Ave, Bronx (718-549-3200, ext 305; wavehill.org) Travel: Metro-North’s Hudson Line local to Riverdale. Sat 15 at 2pm. $55.
Public-programs coordinator Laurel Rimmer leads this popular wreath-making class in Wave Hill’s grand Armor Hall, where participants incorporate juniper, white pine, holly and other garden-fresh materials to produce botanical boughs that smell as good as they look. “I like to add cinnamon sticks and other herbs and spices,” says Rimmer. “Rosemary and cinnamon in particular, combined with the fragrant evergreen, result in a mingling of delicious seasonal scents.”