Stocking Stuffers

Tri-box ornament with bath fizzy ball inside.

M & M's Christmas Story Card

The Santa cocoa mug (original by Michelle Woodard)

Christmas stocking stuffers - do they even exist anymore? When did video games become stocking stuffers? What happened to the good old little gifts that you got to open on Christmas morning that were just as much fun as the 'bigger' gift under the tree?

In our home we have had a tradition that started when my daughter was little. On Christmas morning, when she woke up at the crack of dawn, literally, she could open all the little gifts in her Christmas stocking until a decent hour (7:00 am) that mom and dad woke up and then we could grab a cup of coffee or cocoa and sit around the tree and open the rest of the gifts. This continued when my son was little and we still do this today. For the sake of safety and to prevent early Christmas morning ER visits, Santa used to put the small gifts in the stockings that hung on the mantle and once filled, he took the stockings and hung them on their bedroom door handle. Smart Santa - this way the heavy stocking holders would not fall off the mantle and onto little heads. As they grew older, Santa no longer felt it necessary to do this. Is he smart or what?

With stocking stuffers in mind, I am making a few little gifts that I thought would be fun and inexpensive. Not all of them are my original ideas, but I have taken the ideas from some very creative people and adapted them for my own.

By the way, my 'crack of dawn' comment above means 5:00 am. We lived in South Africa where Christmas is in the middle of the summer and dawn begins at around 4:30 am. So you see, we had to come up with an ingenious solution ... uh, I mean tradition ... to have a couple of hours extra sleep which ofcourse didn't quite happen because of the squeals of excitement coming from the room next door, but we tried.