Christmas

Feeling bad about the ten rolls of gift wrap you blew through this past holiday? Well, make up for your global destructiveness by tossing those empty wrapping paper tubes to the kids for oodles of quick cheap thrills. Marie from awe-inspiring family site Make and Takes has put together a fun little list of clever ideas for upcycling those empty wrapping paper rolls.

Amy from Let's Explore has a simple yet grand idea for repurposing all those holiday cards into a fun activity for young kids. She's provided a fast and easy tutorial on how to make a "Christmas Card Puzzle Game". I can't wait to make a set or two of these puzzle cards for my own 2 year old daughter. It's such a basic, clean matching/puzzle idea that I know my detail obsessed little girl is going to go crazy over.

Out with the old, in with the new includes that crispy evergreen, half a day away from being a serious fire hazard, sadly sitting in the corner of the living room among the holiday rubbish. Now that you're beginning to regain the strength that's been sucked dry from too many champagne toasts, sugar cookies and cabbage rolls on New Year's Eve you're more likely going to want to pack away the holiday cheer for another year this weekend. But what to do with the dead tree?

Moogsmum has posted a few links to some pretty crafty recycled paper Christmas crafts. Among the ideas listed is this super-smart gift bag tutorial made from your breakfast routine basics. With a few well chosen newspaper pages, a cereal box, string or ribbon and some glue you can put together a sturdy, environmentally friendly, virtually free gift bag. Oh how it hurts plopping down four bucks for a gift bag.

Trying to "green" your holiday decorations? Wanting to switch out those energy wasting Christmas lights for some sweet new LEDs because you heard they give off 90% less energy thus preventing you from screaming "why, WHY..what was it all for?" when you receive your post-holiday electric bill come next month? Heck, even Disneyland decks their castle in over 80,000 LEDs at Christmas. Don't throw out those old lights just yet.

Since 1955 North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) the "bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada," has the important job of "tracking Santa" on Christmas Eve. The story goes "...after an errant phone call was made to the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. The call was from a local youngster who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a local newspaper advertisement.

This Saturday, December 21st American Cinematheque is holding a very special free Family Matinee screening of 1970 holiday musical classic "Scrooge" The event will be at Hollywood's Egyptian Theater and has been made possible through a generous grant from Hollywo

You're two days away from winter vacation, seven days away from Christmas. As of Friday, 12:40pm your kids are off from school for three looonnnngggg weeks. By 1pm they'll be antsier than ants and grumpy when they start coming down from the school holiday party induced sugar high. With the final countdown to Christmas officially set you're going to need a major bag of tricks to keep your cool until the big guy in the red suit arrives.

Author/illustrator Jan Brett has made a huge name for herself in the kiddie book market. Her picture books are as interesting to look at as they are to read. And many of our preferred holiday reads come from her. She simply has a way with wintertime.

Big gifts come in big boxes. Watching my own children drooling all over the cardboard and dreaming of the structural possibilities they hope to construct once the box is fully emptied and up for grabs makes me constantly on the lookout for crafty people sharing their cardboard container creations.