Today’s favorite thing is our collection of playsilks. I first got turned on to playsilks back in Michigan where we would attend the biannual festival at our local Waldorf School. The kids got to dye their own silks and they used them for everything from capes to blankets to forts. They literally wore their silks to shreds from year to year and I finally started to invest in some decent silks of various colors.

True to form, Addison and Noah love their silks just as much as their older brothers did. In fact, don’t tell anyone, but Dalton has been known to tie one around his neck in superhero fashion even recently!

This past year I bought some “blanks” - plain white playsilks from Dharma Trading. When it was Easter season, I stocked up on Easter egg dye and saved it for a rainy day. This past fall I pulled it all out and Noah and I dyed our silks. The egg dye didn’t work as well as I would have liked so we bought some Koolaid and kept on going. The Koolaid worked great on top of smelling delicious!! So for just a few bucks, we had a dozen different colored play silks that we dyed ourselves.

Play silks are one of those very basic toys, like blocks, that are so simple and yet have endless imaginative possibilities. In addition, there is something very grounding about playing with toys made of natural fibers. The kids just keep coming back for more. We have real dress up clothes, Halloween costumes in two HUGE bins and pretend play items but its the silks my kids have used to death. They would much rather throw on a silk “cape” than a vinyl or polyester version of the same (both of which we own).

If you invest, I recommend Sarah’s Silks. I also recommend getting bold colors in hues that match nature - like blue for sky, green for grass, etc. But I also love our deep purple and red silks.

This year I’m doing Shimelle’s famous Journal Your Christmas class online for the first time. I am hoping it will inspire me to unpack and organize my scrapbooking stuff and maybe get a few layouts done along the way. I love the whole idea of the Christmas Journal - a way to look back every year on our holidays and have a concrete visual reminder of all that was magical. I’ve felt like Christmases past were some of the very most magical times in both my young life and my adult life and I hope to create those memories for my kids as well. In the last few years, however, my holidays have been miserable, I’ve been miserable. I feel like I’ve sort of gone through the motions, at best. I’ve let other people’s actions dictate how I move through life in general and none of that has been more painful to me than during the holidays. I refuse to lose another holiday even though, believe me, people in my life are trying very hard to take it away from me.

Today is day one of Journal Your Christmas and the assignment is to create a manifesto. I love Shimelle’s Manifesto this year but last year’s really speaks to me and since I didn’t do JYC last year, I’m going to go with that one:

Manifesto: Noun. A declaration of one’s intentions.

Starting December first, I will keep a Christmas journal. In it, I will write something every day to reflect on the holidays of my past, enjoy the holidays of the present and dream about the holidays of my future. To some, this will be a stack of papers and trivial scribbles, but not to me. I am taking back my Christmas, I am letting it be something I relish and, most importantly, I am giving at least fifteen minutes every day to myself no matter how crazy this season becomes. I hope you will share, encourage and understand as I make something with my own hands, my own words and my own memories. 

So today I take back my Christmas.

Today’s family advent activity is:

Nutty Noodly Clusters

This recipe comes from my Mom although there are countless versions available online now that are frequently called Haystacks. We had these every year at Christmastime. My Mom would make a huge batch and store them in a tupperware container up in our coat closet where they would stay really cold and yummy. These are my favorite cookie of the season although there is no real reason why these are considered a “holiday cookie”.

These cookies are really really fast and easy to make. They are perfect to make with kids - or for kids to make themselves.

Ingredients:

2 (6 oz.) pkg. chocolate chips
2 (6 oz.) pkg. butterscotch chips
2 (3 oz.) cans La Choy chow mein noodles
1/2 c. peanuts

Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips in a heavy sauce pan over low heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and quickly stir in noodles and nuts so they are evenly coated. Dip out by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper. Chill and refrigerate.