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Inner
Space: Miss the Mall ... Make Holiday It's December 23. You're in the mall. ... You're pulling your small child along as if she were a bag of laundry. Large down coats with people in them surround you. Jingle Bell Rock is playing … again. You have twenty-seven people to buy gifts for and zero ideas. You begin to strongly dislike all twenty-seven of them. You begin to wish aliens would abduct you and bring you back December 27. Suddenly, hordes of grouchy fake Santas begin to chase you. You pick up your daughter and try to run, but your legs are stuck in glitter. They're closing in. … You wake up sweating. It was just a dream. It's only mid-November. There's still time to prepare for the winter holidays, make it something fun and meaningful, something your children will remember, a way out of the tension and commercial glitz. How? Homemade gifts. ... Not the Martha Stewart kind, mind you. They seem so easy and elegant, but end up costing a fortune and never quite looking like hers. No painted macaroni, please. … Your children, even if they're in preschool, can make beautiful gifts that will be treasured by family members. And your kids will learn what the holidays and gift-giving are really about. They'll never forget working together on those dark, late afternoons or evenings, the table covered with treasures: glitter, feathers, paints, colored glass. Start now so you can do a little at a time. What a young child can't complete in an hour or so, he'll feed to the family dog. And they need to see the finished product immediately. (Admit it, so do you.) You'll have to make gifts, too, or else the kids will suspect that homemade gifts aren't good enough for grown-ups. There are plenty of grown-ups who feel that way, but they're in gift shops buying beautiful items that somebody else made by hand. ... Hmm?
A Nice Way to Start: It's nice to introduce the work season with pomanders. Oranges, whole cloves, powdered cinnamon, red ribbon. Just stick the cloves into the orange skin in rows (the cloves are sharp). Sprinkle with cinnamon Wrap the ribbons around the orange, in-between the rows, leaving long ends at the top so you can hang them. They smell spicy and cozy, and will keep their scent as they dry. Now you're all in the mood. Here are a few more ideas, then, some things to start with. Very simple: Fabric markers and plain white T-shirts. What grandmother won't wear a t-shirt that has a grandchild's artwork on it? Older kids can write something, as well as draw a picture. There are 3-D and fluorescent markers, too. So go to town. {Not literally, of course.} Using non-toxic acrylic paints, the kids can also paint any number of things: a picture frame for a photo, a red clay flower pot (they can pot a plant in it, too), the cover of a looseleaf cloth notebook for a journal or photo album, a single large tile (sometimes tile stores will give away samples).
Fairly Simple Projects: Collect dried grasses, weeds , pine cones, etc. Now, before they're gone. Using non-toxic gold paint (and lots of newspaper on table and floor) … paint. They really look classy, and most kids like shiny gold stuff. (Insert another admission here … so do you.) You can put them in a washed Tabasco bottle, or even better, a small bottle of blue or brown glass. Never underestimate the value of a cigar box -- an empty one that is. Children can cut out pictures from old magazines and paste them all over the box .. (You may have to check to make sure the edges of the cut-outs are pasted flat.) Then, using clear acrylic gloss, you can varnish the box. You can also use different kinds of dried beans. They make a beautiful mosaic. Put glue on the surface and lay the beans onto it. An older child can also cut and paste velvet on the inside for a fancy jewelry box. Pseudo-stained glass. There are special translucent paints for glass. They require a little patience because you need to let a coat dry before applying the next. Remember those Tabasco bottles? They look lovely in translucent colors. You can also buy small plates of glass with ready-made holes for hanging, but you probably have plenty of jars, glasses, bottles or old hamster cages waiting to be transformed.
For Children a Bit Older. There's self-hardening clay that can create wonderful gifts. It takes some work to soften up-you may have to do that part yourself. But once you do, the kids can make beautiful bowls. Let them make a long snake with the clay, then build the bowl by spiraling the clay-snake upward. They can use extra water to smooth out the inside. It can take a couple of weeks for the clay to completely harden. After it dries, they can paint the bowls, then fill them with cinnamon sticks or dried rosemary or rose petals. An older child can make a candle holder or menorah (or you can make the menorah). Little clay masks are also fun to make, then paint and decorate with feathers, or glitter. A dessert cookbook. Your computer-age child can download recipes for his favorite desserts, print them out and draw the cover or illustrate the recipes. This can be reproduced and/or spiral bound very inexpensively. Or give the sweets themselves-chocolate-dipped dried fruit. Apricots, dried pineapple, or dried pears work well. Help your child melt chocolate chips in a double boiler. Dip the fruit, then lay carefully on waxed paper. Put in cookie tin or box. These won't keep very long, so make them closer to holiday time. Take all those old candle stubs, cut them up, and put them in a clean coffee can in boiling water to melt. Your child can make candles using crayon shavings to color the wax.. To dip, cut a string more than twice the length of one candle. Hold the string at the center and dip both ends into the wax, making a pair. It's really fun to do. The melted wax can also be poured into molds. Paper cups and milk cartons work well, too, because you can just tear the mold away. A Tradition to Treasure: There's more. But there's next year and years to come … Yet, even when they're teenagers with money in their pockets and places to go, there's a good chance they'll still be ready to make holiday gifts. By then it will have become a tradition, strengthened by the pleasure of creating and the pleasure of giving. … And if you miss the Mall, there's always the New Year's Day sales.
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