Do the holidays find you festive ... or frazzled? Stop the stress with helpful articles, holiday get-organized plans, printable pages, recipes and crafts.
During the holiday season, department stores, catalog retailers and online sellers aren't the only businesses anxiously queuing up for a slice of the fourth-quarter pie, i.e. your holiday wallet. Been grocery shopping lately?
What a difference a few days makes! By November, Halloween's candy displays have given way to a maze of buy-me buy-me holiday foodstuffs. Read More >>
Child-friendly, fun craft gift, M&M Cookies in a Jar is perfect for teacher gifts, Secret Santa or stocking stuffers! For a holiday touch, use M&M-brand chocolate candies in seasonal colors.
Our free printable gift tag carries out the M&M-brand theme! Bold and bright, this two-sided tag comes in three lively colors. Print and fold to create this colorful gift-in-a-jar.
What would happen if one of Santa's elves came to your house to visit?
He'd arrive sometime before the holidays began. Sent by Santa to check on good little girls and boys, he'd roam the house at night, popping up in the most unlikely places come morning.
Sometimes, elf mischief would take place--and he'd be caught red-handed! Finally, on Christmas Eve, he'd report to Santa and hitch a ride back to the North Pole ... until next year.
If you can imagine it, you can do it: meet Santa's Magic Elf! Read More >>
If the local newscast (egged on by local retail merchants) tells me one more time exactly how many "shopping days" are left until Christmas, I'll scream! No matter what the count, there are never enough days to shop for/buy/craft/bake gifts for family and friends--and this year of all years, disposable income is in short supply. Read More >>
Judging from my e-mail, what's the single biggest holiday family conundrum? "Whose house for the holidays?" wins, hands down.
It's a universal dilemma for young parents. It's a universal dilemma for their own parents. Where will the "children" spend the holidays?
Shiny new parents of a baby or two yearn to create their own at-home holiday. Their own parents struggle to keep the family together, and preferably at their house.
My own chair sits smack dab in the middle. My children are grown, and I'm a grandmother of teenaged grandsons. Read More >>
Have you been Elf-ed? Join the fun with this Christmas version of the Halloween BOO game.
Sometimes called "You've Been Jingled", "You've Been Elf-ed!" is easy to play.
Sometime before Christmas, one neighbor starts the game, secretly leaving a basket of treats together with an Elf sign and Elf poem explaining how to play the game.
Ring the doorbell and run! It's the best part of You've Been Elf-ed! Read More >>
Gift. Say the word and many levels of meaning go through our minds! When preparing for the Christmas holidays, "gift" can be a loaded term, one that provokes equal parts of anxiety and joy.
In our consumer society, the idea of "gift" is no longer simple, no longer free. The forces of consumption have taken the pure and simple concept of "gift" and layered that concept with staggering traps. Read More >>