How Does Christmas LIVE in Your Family

What does Christmas mean for your kids and your family? In 2009, it is so easy to be overwhelmed with all the stuff AND all the activities that are SUPPOSED to happen during the holiday season. How do you create meaning from all of it? We share some of our rituals. What are yours?

How to Reduce Holiday Stress for Kids

Visualize a heart-filled holiday.
You can do this one at the dinner table. Have everyone in the family close their eyes, focus on their heart, and imagine what kind of holiday will bring joy into their heart. Then share your ideas around the table. This helps kids feel listened to, cared for, and included.

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How to Stop Christmas

“Do you know why Santa is always jolly?” my husband said to me last year as we were driving together to purchase our Christmas tree.

“No, why?” I replied on queue like the well-trained straight man of umpteen years of marriage.

“Because he knows where all the bad girls live,” he said. I laughed.

“Where’s that?” my son piped up from the back seat. He really wanted to know. Read more

How to Keep It Together During Family Holidays

Our Expert Mommy, psychotherapist Shellie Fidell is also a regular on Great Day St. Louis. We loved her recent segment that shares her practical tips on how to manage the added stress of extended family… starting, yup… this week!

Do you have a story to share about a stress-free or stress-full holiday gathering? Share in the comments below. I know Sharon has a great one about a Green Bean Casserole….

Related Articles
How to Make Easy Holiday Treats
How to Celebrate Thanksgiving Read more

Personalize Those Holiday Treats! $1

For just $1, you can win this adorable 3 qt. Cookie jar features a cozy airtight place to store your favorite cookies. Designed by world renowned artist, Kathy Davis, this very colorful cookie jar will delight any home. Personalized with your family’s name. Invite your holiday guests to enjoy the “Tweets” inside.

And you can win this one for ONE DOLLAR. It’s October’s Power of One prize, valued at $38 from ArtisticSensations.com Click on the widget to donate $1 to Parents As Teachers using your credit card. Easy!

How to Make Holiday Keepsakes

So you’ve just created the perfect holiday card! And you’ve sent it to all your friends. But do you keep one for yourself? Do you have an archive of all your sweet, personalized cards from years past? That was my dilemma. Every year, we display all the cards we receive from everyone else and it’s so great to see how much all the children have changed from year to year. But what about your own? Their pictures aren’t really tugging on the heartstrings in some drawer or file folder, are they?

Since my kids were born, I’ve made ornaments out of our annual holiday card. Each one is a little different. One year, I found a company online that would actually print your picture on a glass ornament. I’ve used wooden picture ornaments and silver ones… it’s fun to see the collection grow. My kids looooove putting them up during our First of December Tree-trimming Extravaganza and ooohing and aaahing about their cute, changing selves!

Really… I’m NOT Martha!!! But not only is it a great way to preserve those holiday memories… it’s also a way to get my holiday projects to do double-duty! Practical, see?

Click to see the matching card and ornament!

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Practical Mommy is Ria Sharon. Click the links for Practical Mommy’s recommendations for travel car seats, affordable and fun diaper bags (skip hop bag), and the best-selling crib brand, Da Vinci Crib.

How to Make Easy Holiday Treats

It’s like Santa’s workshop at Practical Mommy’s these days. With the help of two very helpful elves, we whipped up batches and batches of holiday treats. I like to get the kids involved in making something special for their teachers. Each of them have FOUR (count them, four teachers) plus “specialists.” Hence, we make batches and batches of treats. But in case you didn’t read my Thanksgiving story, my days of Martha are OVER. The operative word here is EASY.

Here’s what you need:

• Baker’s Dipping Chocolate
• bag(s) of pretzels
• sprinkles (optional)
• cookie sheets
• parchment paper (optional)

4 Steps to Yummy Holiday Treats
1) Microwave the Chocolate. We used the “Heat and Dip” kind that is microwave safe, white and milk variety.
2) Dip pretzels in melted chocolate. We also used dried apricots.
3) Place on cookie sheet and refrigerate until chocolate is hard (about 5-10 minutes).
4) Pop off cookie sheet and package in really cute tins or bags. (Parchment paper makes the popping off part easier).

That’s it, folks! How PRACTICAL is that?!

For more great and easy crafts that you can do with your kids this season, download Fun Kids Christmas Crafts. You can get it NOW! … not tomorrow when you brave a trip to the mall or, in 5-7 days from Amazon. You can have it NOW… for less than I paid for my dried apricots! Let’s not forget that Winter Break is mere days away!!!

If you’ve bitten by the holiday craft bug, you don’t have to wait. It’s immediate gratification. Just like chocolate-covered pretzels!

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Practical Mommy is Ria Sharon. Click the links for Practical Mommy’s recommendations for travel car seats, affordable and fun diaper bags (skip hop bag), and the best-selling crib brand, Da Vinci Crib.

How to Find the Perfect Gift

I’ve been receiving a flood of great gift ideas from my friends all over… the blogosphere and the real world. And the lovely thing is that these ideas are not extravagant or expensive but instead, thoughtful and meaningful, expressing pure intentions to make a difference. From my friend, Kate, I received an introduction to World Vision. She says, “… an important way to give back and support others whose needs are so modest in comparison to the relative excess of my daily life.” Another one similar to World Vision is Hiefer International. My kids like saying they gave someone a flock of geese!

From my friend Emma, a sweet reminder in the form of her Daily Kindness email arrived: “…small acts of kindness (sharing the popsicles & sharing the bread) are the lovely, simple, close-to-home connections that make life meaningful.”

My favorite so far is The Mother Letter Project that I found out about from Tales from Oakbriar Farms. It’s so in line with our mission here at My Mommy Manual. The project is one man’s Christmas gift to his wife:

Share your stories—no matter how raw or difficult. Share you concerns—no matter how foolish they may seem. Share your wisdom—no matter how you came by it. Share your mother story. The only request? Start the letter “Dear Mother” and sign it. I will compile all of the letters in a Christmas book for my wife.

As of today, there are 97 letters. I’m writing mine this weekend!

But I don’t know if I can beat Beth Kanter’s Gift List. Thanks to Chris Brogan who turned me on to Beth and Beth, who turned me on to this amazing explanation on the nature of giving by Tara Hunt:

In The Gift, Lewis Hyde explains through several folk tales and anthropological studies that the Gift Economy is not one of reciprocation at all. In fact, this obligatory reciprocation has sprouted from the idea of trade in our current market economy. A gift is not, in fact, a gift unless it continues circulating. So, I buy lunch for person A, then person A gives away her last $10 to person B, who uses it to buy sandwiches, which he shares with person C, who is now well fed enough to get creative and paint that amazing piece of art, which she gives to person D, who is so inspired by that art that he donates it to the local artist community, who displays it in their community garden, which many walk by to admire, one of whom decides to donate some money to a local neighbourhood beautifying project, which builds a spectacular park where I can now enjoy reading in, which will lead to all sorts of wonderful things.

The gift, as it moves along, actually becomes more and more valuable. In my example, a gift of lunch from me could turn into a large improvement in my community, but in really basic terms, the very nature of the gift is to continue to grow in value as it gets passed along and the increments don’t tend to be felt as burdens to the person passing the gift along, either as it is a natural process. Remember the story of the guy who ‘Traded up’ the paperclip for a house in Saskatchewan? Well, that’s kind of the idea…each ‘trade’ became a simple increment between a red paperclip to a whole house.

My kids have been collecting money in their charity jar all year and like Kate and her two young boys, the kids will pick who they want to help with their contributions.

What gifts will you share this season? Popsicles? Cookies? A hug? Hey, it’s clementine season! They make great “red paperclips.”

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Practical Mommy is Ria Sharon. Click the links for Practical Mommy’s recommendations for travel car seats, affordable and fun diaper bags (skip hop bag), and the best-selling crib brand, Da Vinci Crib.

How to Keep Believing!

Have you read The Polar Express? I love that very last line, “The bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe.”

The countdown to Christmas begins. Notes to Santa have been sent northward and my little ones wait excitedly, confident that Santa has his Garmin programmed for the right address. I still recall the first year that my daughter awoke to her first Santa gift. She had asked for her very own Christmas tree with lights and ornaments! She was visibly shaking as daddy carried her down the stairs and she spied the fully adorned tree. “He really came. He got me what I wanted!” She kept whispering.

As we get older, it seems that our minds get in the way… kids start to ask, “How is Santa in every mall at the same time?” or “How is Santa going to get in if we don’t have a chimney?” My standard response is… “Magic!” But this will only work for so long. In my house, I’m already scrambling because the requests to Santa have taken a bit of a too-magical turn. My boy wants a “come alive suit that will let me fly to Disney World” OR “a magic wand that can poof anything.” Ummmm…. those elves have their work cut out for them!

If we could only bottle up their faith! How can I protect their belief in magic, especially in a society that seems out to prove that it doesn’t exist? How do I encourage my children to dream, to imagine great things when the grown-up world urges us to stick to safe and sensible choices?

I still believe. I’ve written “letters to Santa” practically every day this year in the form of prayers and journal entries. Perhaps a little overkill, I know. BUT hey! I’ve gotten everything I’ve asked for… and there is no arguing the fact that I must be squarely on the VERY naughty list this year.

I believe that our ability to CREATE is magic — it’s the ability to see beyond a present reality to what COULD BE. Not so long ago, I fell in love… with a dream, a possible future. And it was that dream that allowed me to change my life. I’m so grateful for the strength of my imagination, because it was the thing that carried me through a very tumultuous period and got me to this side. It was my resistance to simply accepting reality that allowed me to see past fear and to “make my days replay my dreams.” (as my favorite singer, Christine Kane says). Isn’t that magic?

That my kids can immerse themselves in a world where almost everything “comes alive” and gives them magical powers is, in fact, the magic wand!

So… do the sleigh bells ring for you?

How to Spread Holiday Kindness

Emma publishes a great blog called Live Kindly. Sign up for her Daily Kindness reminder. I love it… short and sweet and… just enough to focus my day on something KIND.

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