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Dear Sandi: My sister gave me a bunch of artificial onions, garlic and a few other fake vegetables that she found while cleaning out my mother’s basement. Some of these are quite old. I think they are from the late 50s or early 60s. Since they were Mom’s, I would like to do something with them. Got any ideas? —Julian E., Salem

I like to use them in all kinds of decorating projects. I love them all: fake veggies, fake fruit, fake eggs, fake meats, fake bread and cheese, even fake fish! I particularly like the faux (and very expensive) cakes, pies and other desserts that you occasionally see, which is strange because I am not much of a real dessert person. Then again, maybe that’s why I like the fake ones!

They are so much fun, and some of them are so realistic- looking that you would never know that they are not the real thing.

Like most things, there are good ones and not-so-good ones, and depending on what you inherited, you have lots of creative options.

Onions and garlic are some of the most versatile of the faux-food group. For centuries, real onions and garlic have been stored in living spaces where they are quite visible. It is easy to adapt this age-old technique.

You didn’t mention whether your cache includes singles, bunches or even braids, but all can be used to decorative advantage.

If you have braids, you really don’t need to do much more than hang them up, probably in the kitchen unless you have an allium decor thing going somewhere else in the house.

Although simply letting them fill up a corner or an empty space on the wall is fine, they also make great tiebacks for kitchen curtains.

It may sound odd, but I have kitchen curtains that are held open by, of all things, a squash swag (no matter that real squash don’t lend themselves to this treatment).

If you have some type of hanging light fixture over the kitchen table, you also could let a garland or two snake down the chain, or perhaps you want them to meander through the pots and pans hanging from a pot rack over the cooking island.

A lot also depends on the size of the actual vegetables on the garland. We saw a very cool decor idea in an Italian bistro where they had framed the top third of all their doors with garlands festooned with small pearl onions.

If you like the idea of using your veggies this way but only have individual pieces, you may be able to braid them together yourself. Many older ones were made of corn husk, and these usually have much longer “stems” on them that can be worked into some type of garland or swag.

The color probably is fairly monochromatic. If you have swags that you really like, but they are a bit blah, consider picking up a few other types of faux garlands that you can mix in to punch up the color. Chili pepper garlands, often available made from paper, look great with any type of onion or garlic.

If you don’t have braids, single pieces also can be used in all kinds of different ways.

Depending on how attractive the actual pieces are that you have, the most effective thing might be to simply put them into a great-looking bowl and let it go at that.

If you don’t want to take up the counter space, those hanging veggie baskets, or even one of the twine French market bags, would look great filled with the day’s produce.

If you are a bit more whimsical, you may want to try your hand at something slightly more adventurous.

We created a small kitchen mirror frame using a few pieces of paper pulp tile (these look like weathered adobe or terra cotta tile but are very lightweight and made from paper pulp). We adhered them to a wood frame that we had cut out of a piece of plywood.

We took our fake onions, which are made of foam but covered with real onion skin, cut them in half and glued them to our frame, flat side down. Then we “mortared” with reindeer moss and also added more moss around the onions and down the sides of the tiles.

An inexpensive mirror attached to the backside completed this quick and easy project, and it would work great by a back kitchen door, where you could take that last glance before dashing out.

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Another fun idea, especially at this time of year, would be to put together a “bulb” basket as a gift for someone who likes to garden. Choose an interesting bag or container, fill the bottom with onion sets that you can buy from the nursery, then top off the container with a few of your fabulous fakes, tucked into a bed of soft reindeer moss. We made a few of these as “thank you” gifts a few years ago, and they brought a smile to every recipient’s face when they got them.

The same advice goes for garlic braids, but because they generally are going to be much smaller than their onion relatives, use more of them. They all, of course, look great mixed together in whatever way you choose.

Whether you are going for a country kitchen look, a Mediterranean touch or just want to add a bit of kitsch to your decor, I think you will find your fakes great fun to play with. April 1, 2005