Christmas Thoughts

The Women’s Insitutute (WI) published a small book in 2007, Practical Know-how at Christmas. Along with the hints, they included some timeless quotations about the holiday. Here are some of them:
Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money.  (Anonymous)
Life is much like Christmas — you [...]

Christmas Handmade Decorations for Little Hands

©2008, Ramona K. Silipo. All rights reserved.
One of the simplest handmade tree ornaments is a spiral. You can make them in different sizes by tracing different round objects– for instance, jar lids of several different sizes; or a teacup, a mug, and a saucer. The larger the circle, the longer the dangle from the tree [...]

Quakerly Christmas

©2008, Ramona K. Silipo. All rights reserved.
Friends (Quakers) have a testimony against holding special days (holidays), presumably based on the concept that each day is a blessing and that we should have one standard of behaviour for every day of the year. This means that many Friends do not celebrate holidays such as Easter, Christmas [...]

Crafty Fun for Children as Summer Rolls into Autumn

©2008, RKSilipo. All rights reserved.
Hardly seems possible, but over the weekend, I heard the first TV commercial this year to give the countdown to Christmas… even before Labor Day. It gets earlier every year.
I don’t mind much, since I love Christmas and I read about it, buy gifts for friends and make plans for holiday [...]

Good Dog, Carl – A Canine Babysitter with Lots of Stories to Tell

©2008,Ramona K Silipo. All rights reserved.
Good Dog Carl is the first in the series of Carl books by Alexadra Day, based on her own experiences with her dog. In this story, we meet The Mother who is seen only fleetingly, because the protagonist of these books is a cuddly, paternal Rottweiler, and his sidekick is [...]

Christmas Stories (2)

An Oxford Book of Christmas Stories includes both traditional and modern tales, and the illustrations are evocative and lush. These are stories for grown ups to enjoy and to read with children.
Some of the titles will give you an idea: “Burper and the Magic Lamp,” by Robert Leeson. “Ghost Alarm,” by Nicholas Fisk. “The Anarchist’s [...]

Christmas – Homemade Fun with Children

When I was growing up, we took tremendous delight in decorating the Christmas tree. We had some beautiful old glass ornaments, and my dad one year went out and bought these bubble lights. The were shaped like candles in a holder, and the colored water in them boiled when they had been on for [...]

Christmas stories

One of the best Christmas stories I’ve ever read is No Holly for Miss Quinn, by Miss Read. She wrote two series of novels about English village life, and three novels about life in a small English market town from the turn of the 20th century through the post-WWII period.
I love this book especially for [...]