Try This At Home

I recently came across an old article that I had torn out and saved from Real Simple Magazine (September 2006). I couldn't remember why it seemed so special until I started thumbing through the four or five pages. The article is full of 29 ideas to help bring your family closer together. Lots of the ideas are great for families with children, and even though we don't have children yet I hope to store some of these ideas away to use later. I am not going to share all 29 ideas, but I will share a few that I think are great.


1. Have the Early-Bird Special: Change the evening-meal routine by serving breakfast for dinner every Friday night. Wear pajamas to the table for the full effect.

2. Double the Fun: Commemorate half-birthdays (six months after the actual birthday): Serve half a cake, purchase a small gift for the honoree, and give the half-birthday boy or girl the royal treatment for half a day.

3. Play "Hooky": Surprise your kids once a year by taking a day off and keeping them out of school. Then hang out together playing games, watching movies, or baking cookies.

4. Volunteer Together: Help out somewhere as a family once a year or even once a month. Choose a day that has special meaning only for your family-rather than a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas- so you'll be serving during a time when few others are and more help is needed.

5. Stage a Camp-In: Spread out sleeping bags in the living room, light a fire in the fireplace, cook up s'mores, and tell ghost stories by flashlight.

6. Archival Quality: Create a time capsule on the day the newest family member is born: Fill it with that day's newspaper, a number one CD, a best-selling book, and a celebrity tabloid. Pass along the capsule when the child graduates from high school.

7. Hot Topics: Place a jar in the middle of the dinner table and fill it with conversation starters written on strips of paper. Each night a family member can take one out and read it to the group.

8. Sponsor a Graduation Trip: Take each child or grandchild on a high school graduation trip of his or her choice, for some one-on-one time with you before the graduate heads off on the next adventure.

9. Winter Wonderland: (I LOVE this idea if you are lucky enough to live someplace where it is guaranteed that it will snow) Buy and wrap a "first snowfall" gift every autumn and leave it in a hall closet. When your children wake up to find a snow-covered yard, the day becomes even more of a celebration.