Family Gifts That Teenagers Don't (Completely) Hate

The original Beach Hair Don't Care buddies at Sleeping Bear Dunes in 2022!

When the kids were pretty small, I made up this thing where I give everyone a "family gift" on Christmas Eve. It wasn't really a big deal when the kids were little and they already always wanted to do stuff with us, but now?

OMG it's a big deal!

My nearly-all-the-way-grown teenagers are actually still excellent about acting like they want to spend time with their boring parents, but even then there's so much that takes us all away from each other constantly--everyone has jobs, the kids have school and extracurriculars all over the place at all times, then they have more schoolwork to do when they're home, then when they're done with all of that their friends would like to see them sometimes, too! 

So family time is extra precious now, and these family gifts are a sneaky way to legislate it into our busy lives.

Here are some of everyone's favorite family gifts over the years:

books and movies

Up through just a few years ago, we constantly had a family read-aloud going. It was real old-fashioned, and very much a stereotypical homeschool family thing, but we LOVED it. We plowed through a ridiculous amount of Jules Verne that way, and the entirety of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy, along with so much more. 

Other good books for reading aloud with families of all ages include the All-of-a-Kind Family series, Anne of Green Gables series, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Dark is Rising series, the Harry Potter series (buy the books used so you don't support Rowling), the Little House series, The Once and Future King, and the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories. 

The kids, well into their teenaged years, eventually lost interest in being read to, but we all still really like to watch long-winded television and movie series together--one of our goals for Thanksgiving break, actually, was to re-watch the entire Jurassic Park franchise, which we happily did over several nights. And our years-long, at this point, challenge to watch the entirety of Supernatural has no end in sight!

We've got a lot of movies that we like to watch yearly, with the entirety of October being Horror Movie Month and the entirety of December being Christmas Movie Marathon Month. A LONG, long time ago, I made everyone watch White Christmas during this month, not even exactly expecting my young kids to like it, but essentially just because I love musicals and *I* wanted to watch it that year.

Ummmm.... we all LOVED it?!? Mind you, we skip the "minstrel number" because it's gross, but over what must be, at this point, at least a decade of yearly viewing, we've developed a few different headcanons and secret subplots and a billion inside jokes that feed into the rest of the year, not the least of which is this particular number:

I quite like to sing it to the children whenever they're not getting along AT ALL.

Good movies and series to watch with the family include Doctor Who, Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings movies, the Marvel movies, Psych, Sharknado, Sherlock, and Star Wars. 

camping and outdoor stuff

I leap upon any chance to get the kids away from their screens. I mean, screens are great, because that's how a lot of kids, mine included, do a lot of their socializing with friends these days, and I wouldn't take away their group chats for the world, but I LOVE it when there's a handy, no-fault excuse to be all, "Dang, no wi-fi or data? Guess we'll just have to talk to each other!" I went cabin camping with my Girl Scout troop last weekend, and it was pretty magical to see all the ways that they related to each other without screens. They played card games, listened to music, made Christmas crafts, cooked, and talked and talked and talked and talked!

Not every outdoor activity has been a hit, but most of us more-or-less enjoy activities like skiing, kayaking and paddleboarding, hiking, snorkeling, and bicycling. All the matching gear for that can get VERY spendy, but most of it you can keep using practically forever. And some stuff, like these hand warmers that I put in everyone's stocking last year, actually aren't too pricey and get tons of use over the winter. I can also still usually bribe teenagers to come outside when there are marshmallows, so fire pits big and small are always fun.

I wouldn't dare try to get away with giving camping stuff as a family gift anymore, but the kids used to like camping pretty well, and receiving gifts like their very own hiking backpacks and backpacking tents was once upon a time very fun! Fortunately, I bought that stuff to last, because even now when I have to make them come with me they can still use it all.

class or adventure

2021 pre-Christmas trip to New York City!

There was exactly one year in which both of my kids enjoyed traveling, and OMG I enjoyed every second of that year. I miss you, 2018! Both before and after, one or the other of my kids have been grumpy travelers, and sometimes I'm lucky enough for both of them to be accompanying me only under duress. 

Disneyland on Thanksgiving Day in that magical year of 2018!

But even when a kid proclaims to be absolutely miserable on the magical adventure that I have thoughtfully planned out for her, they still have a perfectly fine time whenever they forget to gripe about it. The crankiest traveler is also generally amenable to super quick family trips that we take just to do one or two especially cool things. Good family gifts include train or plane tickets, theme park tickets, concert or show tickets, passes to ski resorts or waterparks, and gift cards to trampoline parks, climbing gyms, and arcades. 

Everyone in my family also likes more guided experiences like museum or zoo behind-the-scenes opportunities, classes for skills like glass blowing or baking, and open-ended activities like pottery painting or candymaking. We also don't fight too much when we share subscription boxes, and it's fun to think of more things to add to the experience every month, like a themed movie or restaurant. 

And it's not quite a Christmas gift for us, exactly, but my town has a ton of opportunities to sponsor and shop for a local kid's Christmas wish list, and it is SO FUN! You get to argue as a group over which pair of baby leggings is cuter, and dither over Monster Jam trucks because you can't decide if the shark one or the dinosaur one is more fun, and pick out little stocking stuffers and matching blankies, and then you get all the extra fun of thinking about how much they're going to love their presents, and thinking of them again on Christmas day when you know they're probably opening their gifts, hoping that they're having an absolutely marvelous time. Here's the set of four siblings that my Girl Scout troop is shopping for this year, if your family doesn't have time for a full-on shopping expedition but still want to make some kids' holiday a little more magical.

craft or DIY kits

I love family projects, and I can generally get the teenagers on board, too, if the project isn't too corny. Whether or not a project is too corny depends on the teenager--one of them, for instance, has now declared tie-dye corny, which is ridiculous because tie-dye is AWESOME but whatever. 

Matt is the LEGO parent, and he and the kids happily dive into even the biggest LEGO sets. I'm more the parent who instigates projects that are sneakily educational so I can put them on the kids' transcripts, or the one who buys all the crap to make the latest Tiktok food trend.

Other good family DIY kits include sourdough starters, food crafting kits, cookie decorating sets, ornament making, and kits for making useful family stuff like bird houses or feeders, coasters, and bookends. 

games and puzzles

We don't play as many family games as we did when the kids were younger, although Cards Against Humanity is still a BIG hit with everyone. What we all still really like, though, are giant puzzles that we can work on while listening to our favorite family podcasts--currently, The Black Tapes and The Magnus Archives, because Night Vale is Will's only exception to her otherwise firm rule that she only listens to serial podcasts after they're complete.

There are a few games that I play with the kids without Matt, for some reason. Syd and I are the biggest fans in the world of the Hunt a Killer series; she buys me a new one for every gift-giving occasion, and then we have a whole evening together of listening to music, eating special snacks, and solving a murder. I also have separate Stardew Valley co-ops with each of the kids, and we happily spend time together each week polishing up our farms and working to rebuild the community center. 

Other good games and puzzles to do as a family are Scrabble, Quirkle, this Harry Potter co-op game, Minecraft, Second Chance, Monopoly, and any thrift store puzzle because you never know what you'll actually get!

matching clothing

Okay, not like MATCHING matching, because even I wouldn't go for that. We've never even gone full-on matching Christmas pajamas, which is totally mainstream now. It's more like we all just get the same kind of stuff and it's funny. One year those big fuzzy adult rompers were on trend, so I surprised everybody with their own handpicked fuzzy adult romper on Christmas Eve, and everybody but Syd still wears theirs on odd winter nights, and Syd only doesn't still wear hers because she had another growth spurt after that. Another Christmas Eve I bought everybody fuzzy novelty slippers, which Matt and I still wear but the kids have since decided that they're not "slippers people," whatever that means. And another year I discovered MeUndies and thought it would be hilarious to put literal matching underwear in everyone's stockings. It was, indeed, hilarious! Mostly, though, I just, like, give everybody the same kind of wooly hat, say, so then we're all just wearing wooly hats or whatever.

Other good matching clothing items are jammy pants, novelty socks, Christmas sweaters, sweatshirts (although the kids and I all simultaneously wore our hoodies branded with Will's new college during a summer road trip, and it was AWFUL because everyone literally thought we were on a school field trip, but Will did get us a school discount at the fudge shop so it was worth it), and college or sports merch.

If you've got any other ideas for family gifts that teenagers wouldn't completely hate, I would LOVE to hear them! With Will heading off to college in a minute, I'm really feeling the urge to pack in all the family bonding time I can get, and to plan more family bonding for long-distance and school breaks. 

An Officer and a Mouse Dance Onto the Stage: Ten Photos from Nutcracker 2022

 

Another Nutcracker season is done and dusted! My anxiety eye twitch hasn't yet gotten the news, nor has my brain at approximately 3:00 every morning, but any moment now I'm sure all the stress of that most stressful week of the year will just magically drain away and leave me ready for some relaxing holiday cheer.

A sampling of the week's greatest triumphs and greatest WTFs:

• I found out that the wig department has been having children share wigs, and that this has apparently been going on for YEARS. How on earth there is not a ballet program-wide lice outbreak every single December is beyond me, although the semester does end less than a week after the show wraps, so maybe parents never connect the dots as to why their kid suddenly has lice two weeks before Christmas.
• When the kid playing Fritz in all performances and with no understudy got sick midway through the third of five performances, another kid had to step into the role with zero prior rehearsals, and that kid freaking NAILED it. The kid's wig was terrible, though. All the kid wigs are terrible.

The weirdest thing that happened, though, was the Thursday evening premiere performance. I dropped my kid off for her warm-up class, then figured I'd walk around campus for a while, get a little exercise before sitting down for two hours. 

My walk, though, was super weird. Normally, the university campus is bright and welcoming, and I've spent tons of evenings moseying along the paths around the buildings and through the woods and by the creek while feeling safe as houses. But on this night, campus most strongly resembled the opening seven minutes of a horror movie. I'd be walking along a brightly-lit path, then take another step and be in a pool of absolute darkness. Thirty feet ahead the lamps would be lit just like normal, then turn a corner and suddenly I was thrust back into darkness. I took my entire walk, but I was definitely about to be murdered by ghost-wolves or skeleton creek pirates the entire time.

I circled back to the parking garage to drop off my headphones and collect my ticket, then headed over to the theater. But it just kept being weird! As I was walking out of the theater's parking garage, whole well-dressed families kept walking in, clearly having just left that same theater. Was there some kind of early sensory-friendly Nutcracker for children that had just ended, I wondered? And maybe I didn't know about it because they didn't need their starring dancers, Mouse #2 or Officer #5?

And then as I got closer, I started seeing in some of the family groups small children wearing their hair in the very distinctive bun on the top of the head, hair slicked down smooth hairstyle that the program dictates for Soldiers and Angels. But... they were all leaving the theater, as they would if the show was over and their parents had picked them up from the check-out table next to the Green Room and they were headed home.

Had... I lost time? Was I, in fact, having a mental break? Had the ghost-wolves put me in a trance every time I walked through their darkened domain? Because indeed, the front of the theater was PACKED with people, all leaving. 

As I reached the theater, confused and wondering if I was safe to drive home or if my kid had brought her license or if I needed to call Matt and tell him I might have had a seizure and he needed to come get us, an usher popped her head out of the closest door and said, "Hi, are you here to see The Nutcracker?"

"Um, yes?" I said.

"It's been cancelled."

In that moment I was a parody of teenager textspeak, because I literally said, "Wut."

The bemused usher just sort of gestured around and said, "There's a power outage?"

And that was the moment that I actually looked at my own environment and noticed that oh, yes, there WAS a power outage! The theater was dark! No marquee lights, no spotlight on the two-storey Nutcracker statue in the lobby, DUH no street lights! I'd actually dropped my precious child off at a darkened theater and hadn't even noticed, had been walking in and out of the zone of the power outage for an hour and hadn't noticed the occasional building with blackened windows.

I went down to the basement to find my kid, forgetting that I own a pocket flashlight in the guise of a cell phone but still somehow by the grace of god not falling down a completely black flight of steps--yay, me!--to find SO many sobbing Soldiers and Angels at the check-out table, poor babies. My own kid was well enough, happy to have the assurance of the department that they'd find a way to re-run this canceled show.

And they did!

My teenager danced her heart out in all five performances, as well, this year, dividing her time between Team Mouse--

--and an Officer in the Nutcracker's army:

Neither role is meant to be particularly showy or special, but still. When you're an Officer, after all, you get to dance en pointe in front of an audience of thousands--

Suffolk Silhouette pointe shoes are the truth and the light!

--and when you're a Mouse, not only do you do a mousely pas de deux with your Mouse partner as one of only three people on the entire stage at the time (the third being that brat Clara, and all she's doing is sitting in bed so she barely counts), but you're a guaranteed kid favorite at every intermission walk-around:

And, of course, as always, the real treasure is the friends you make along the way, so even when they make you dance in pants and a coat and a hat, or a fat suit and a giant furry head, being a Nutcracker kid is still a guaranteed ticket to the best week of the year:

I chaperoned little kids backstage while getting to take an occasional break with my own kid who's now too big to need a chaperone--

--but mostly I hung out here and there, babysitting the world's heaviest ballet bag--

The kid isn't devoted to any one hairspray (I just buy her a big ole can of AquaNet seasonally), but MetaGrip bobby pins mean everything to her.

--watching a succession of curtains rise and fall--

--and having an occasional glass of pre-show wine while putting my butt in a seat for five Nutcrackers in 48 hours:

And now the kids' second-to-last Nutcracker year is over. It was messy and stressful and delightful. I love watching my kid dance, and I love seeing what a magical time she has with all of her sweet ballet friends. 

Just... knock on wood for me that all those shared mouse heads are lice free, okay?

Hot Chocolate and Captain Kangaroo: My Most Must-See, Trouble-Free Nutcracker Productions

Oh, just sprawling across a bank of institutional chairs and trimming one's pointe shoes with a pocket knife... you know, as one does!

Okay, did you traumatize your children or sprain yourself side-eyeing all of the weird and troubling Nutcracker productions, and now you need to look at something nice?

Yes, I might mostly fixate on the weird ones, but there ARE tons of wholesome Nutcracker productions out there in the world. Some productions are just charming and fun, with all sketchy innuendos and racist and sexist tropes deleted--you can watch these without having have any uncomfortable conversations with your children. Some productions have made especially thoughtful choices that demonstrate true equity and inclusion and mean you get to have GOOD conversations with your children--yay! And some productions stay weird, but also in a thoughtful, empowering, purposeful way--these aren't for children, necessarily, but they're interesting and entertaining for adults.

San Francisco Ballet: The Nutcracker

San Francisco Ballet boasts the first complete US production of The Nutcracker, performed in 1944. So watching any of their Nutcracker productions would be notable, but the 2004 production, in particular, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson, is super wholesome and adorable. For a pleasant change, Drosselmeyer does not give off a single insidious, creepy, villainous or sketch vibe of any sort, and actually manages to successfully play the role of an eccentric artist who's just excited to show off the cool stuff he makes, and then solicitously chaperones Clara on an overnight field trip and gets her back home safely. 

Here's a bootleg of the 2007 production on YouTube right now:

The production's conceit that Clara goes to visit the 1915 World's Fair is cute, and it makes the world showcase of Divertissements make sense. My favorite part is near the end, when the Sugar Plum Fairy briefly turns Clara into an adult ballerina so she can have a proper pas de deux with her Prince, and it's sweet but not romantic, and Clara wakes up as a child back in her bed again in the morning. 

Other fun moments: the Arabian female lead popping up out of a giant genie's bottle, a Prologue slideshow of iconic 1915 San Francisco sights, and ribbon dancing!

New York City Ballet: The Nutcracker (revised 2017)

The Nutcracker choreographed by George Balanchine is iconic, and after you've watched it once, ever afterwards you'll notice in every other production you ever see parts that were "borrowed" from his vision. Ahem.

Unfortunately, part of his iconic production that's often borrowed is more of that stupid racist imagery. Chinese Tea is particularly gross, with all the racist stereotypes and unflattering caricatures that you can imagine all just sort of stuffed into one very short number. For that reason, I don't recommend the pretty widely available 2011 New York City Ballet production, available on DVD and right now via this bootleg on YouTube:

Skim through the bootleg if it's still up, if you want, to check out the bullshit costume on the male lead of Chinese Tea. So unnecessary and offensive.

However, New York City ballet revised Chinese Tea in 2017, so now if you're lucky enough to be able to see it live, it will be uniformly delightful! I've long wanted to see this particular production, and I'm not even going to tell you how often I watch the Candy Cane dance from it:

It's part of the good vibes watchlist that I pull out when I'm bummed, along with Tom Holland lip syncing to Rihanna and the "How Far I'll Go" performance at the 2017 Academy Awards.

This updated Nutcracker, or excerpts from the DVD version, pairs with one of our favorite ballet books for children, A Very Young Dancer:

I read all of the Very Young series when I was a kid, and when my own kid was, herself, a very young dancer, I checked it out for her every year during Nutcracker season. It's about a child in the School of American Ballet who plays the role of Clara in the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker. It's written very simply, from the child's perspective, with a lot of black-and-white photos that make one feel like they're really getting a behind-the-scenes look at the school and the production. 

Joffrey Ballet: The Nutcracker

Joffrey Ballet seems to be very diligent about protecting their IP, so this is another production that I'm unable to find a bootleg for, nor can I find the 2017 PBS documentary, "Making a New American Nutcracker," about the Joffrey Ballet's production.

However, seeing this production remains on my bucket list because, as far as I know, the Joffrey Ballet is the only large-scale, prestigious company that includes a role in The Nutcracker deliberately designed for a child in their Adaptive Dance program:

I would LOVE to watch children with different abilities sharing a professional stage and performing a role that respects and includes them. I'd love to see every production behaving so thoughtfully with their casting.

Debbie Allen Dance Academy: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker

One year when we had Netflix for a month so we could catch up on Stranger Things (something that we clearly need to do again so I can watch Season 4!), the kids and I also watched Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, and now we super want to see it live someday. Will also did a biography project on Debbie Allen around that time, and Syd took some of her free online dance classes in the early days of Covid, so we're very much fans of Debbie Allen and her non-profit dance school.

Again, they do a great job protecting their IP (ahem), but they've got some approved clips of various numbers on YouTube.

Here's the Candy Cane dance:

Here's the Bollywood number:

Syd would be SO excited to learn a really fun and exciting genre like step, hip-hop, or Bollywood in concert with her classical ballet classes. It's just so cool what Debbie Allen is doing for the children in her program.

Captain Kangaroo: The Nutcracker Suite

So, if you've got little kids, this is the cutest thing EVER. In 1958, Bob Keeshan made a record in his Captain Kangaroo persona in which he narrated the story of The Nutcracker, including adding lyrics to some of the numbers, and it is charming! 

You can still buy the vinyl--

--but fortunately Archive.org also has the entire record available for streaming and download. 

I didn't discover this album until the kids were too old to appreciate it, but if I'd known about it, I'd have spent every December of their baby through preschool years with it on constant repeat--it's THAT cute!

Somerville Theatre: The Slutcracker

Okay, you know this isn't for kids. But for an adult, what a way to work through the Nutcracker trauma of your youth and/or the Nutcracker trauma of your time parenting a child ballerina!

Somerville Theatre's The Slutcracker gets amazing reviews every year, and it looks like the most fun, lighthearted, irreverent spoof of everything sketch and suss in every Nutcracker production you've ever experienced. 

Once again, I do have a ton more Nutcracker productions that I could drone on and on about genuinely loving, but not only do I have Mouse milkmaid braids to do again in a few minutes, but some MAJOR wig drama went down during last night's dress rehearsal and so I also, as you can imagine, have about fourteen different chat threads to maintain and a lot of roasting to do.

Happy Opening Night, Friends! May the Mouse Army prevail!

Sexy Coffee and Racist Tea: Weird and Troubling Nutcracker Productions

Once upon a time six years ago, there was a very tiny toy soldier bravely marching into battle under the direction of her Nutcracker General to fight off the Mouse hordes. 

Several promotions later, that child soldier has grown into an Officer, dancing her first role en pointe in our local university's production of The Nutcracker. But just between us, the Mice really have the more righteous cause. So don't tell the Nutcracker General, but his Officer will be spending half her time secretly as a Mouse, menacing that brat Clara and bravely fighting her sometimes-comrades, the soldiers. 

I think the Mice might have a real chance to win this year!

It's time, then, for my third-favorite holiday of the year: Nutcracker season! 

Here's a Fun Holiday Game For You: Find the Weirdest and Most Troubling Nutcracker Productions

If I was still working on a PhD (if only PhD programs could be twenty years long, because it took at least fifteen years before I thought of my first original research idea that would have made a good thesis, ahem. And now I get good thesis ideas on the daily!), I would 100% be writing my thesis on regional Nutcracker productions as cultural artifacts that reveal and complicate our society's understanding of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the male gaze when directed at female-presenting adolescents. 

Particularly that last one, ahem. I thought our local university's production was a little heavy on the child predator grooming a future victim vibes, and then I watched literally any other Nutcracker ever choreographed. Most of the productions I've seen have been choreographed by men, and they seem to have a very hard time visualizing a relationship between a male and female, even one with a fifty-year age gap where the female is supposed to be, like, twelve, that's not somehow gross. 

Other Nutcracker cliches to look out for include how heteronormative and cisgender are the children's casting, costumes, props and choreography; is the "Arabian Coffee" dance meant to be "sexy" or not; and how racist does the "Chinese tea" dance present? Our local university's production is pretty racist; it was only a very few years ago that they stopped putting a Fu Manchu mustache on the male lead, recently enough that I still worry every year that it might show up again.

Here's an interesting mini-documentary about how Ballet West addressed racism in the tea dance a few years ago:

Joffrey Ballet now also does a dragon dance, and a nearby university's production invites a local martial arts school to do some sweet moves onstage during that number. 

Every November, then, in the lead-up to The Nutcracker, it's my personal mission to find the weirdest and/or most troubling productions. Partly, I just think it's interesting to see how different choreographers handle the exact same music and same basic plot. Partly, it's just me processing my sour grapes--like, sure, they make my kid dance in pants and ugly wigs every single year even when wearing that pretty party dress and having her hair in curls was her one dream and they 100% gave her height-related body dysmorphia for a while when she finally caught on that it was always the shortest girl who scored Clara, but hey, at least nobody's in blackface in OUR production! But partly, I also like to see how our various societal tropes are expressed in this one cultural commonality. You know, who's doing something different on purpose, and why? Who thought they were doing something different but it's just an even more overt expression of that same cliche? Who's tapped into a way to empower and include artists and audience, and who's actively fighting against equity and diversity?

Dutch National Ballet: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

Many years ago during Nutcracker season, we found a Nutcracker production on YouTube that has, to date, the most bonkers plot twist imaginable: the Mice WIN the battle against the Nutcracker and take all of the child soldiers captive, including Clara's own brother, Fritz, who was commanding the toy soldier army. We were all, like, "Okay, that was weird," and moved onto the Snow Scene, after which Act 1 ends with Drosselmeyer leading Clara and the Nutcracker Prince into... his film projector, I think? There, for some reason, the Mouse King and his army appear again and this time the Nutcracker defeats him and now all the Divertissements dance while Clara and the Prince act cute and Drosselmeyer bops in and out occasionally like a matchmaking Gollum.

So we're just happily watching the Divertissements when Arabian begins with a guy cracking a whip, and then onto the stage stumble enslaved people wearing ragged clothing and chains. The male lead starts his dance, but then one of the enslaved men tries to escape and is dragged back by one leg and starts to dance this weirdly homoerotic S&M pas de deux with the Arabian lead and we all realize--OMG, that's FRITZ!!! Fritz has been sold into slavery to the Arabian dancer! He's got makeup bruises and his clothes are ripped and he's in manacles and now he's rolling around on the floor while the Arabian dancer thrusts over him and it is WILD. 

Every year since, we've tried to find this specific Nutcracker, but never ran across it again. But a couple of nights ago, in a completely hysterical fit of insomnia, I was all, "This is my mission. I will not rest until I have found this fever dream of a Nutcracker." I Googled various search terms involving Nutcracker, Fritz, and "abducted," "enslaved," and "kidnapped," etc. And finally, I cracked it! Welcome, Friends, to the Dutch National Ballet's production of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, choreographed by Toer van Schayk and Wayne Eagling. That YouTube version we watched absolutely was a bootleg of a 2011 filmed and streaming version (if your state university library has a Medici.tv subscription like mine does, you can watch it there), but at least right now you can also watch the 2021 production here. 

Also notable about this production: there's real ice skating in the Prologue and Apotheosis, Fritz tries to spy on his sister while she's changing clothes, and they skip Mother Ginger entirely.

And a random fun fact: after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina denounced the war, fled Russia, and now dances with the Dutch National Ballet.

Mariinsky Ballet: The Nutcracker

This is a fun one to watch, even before it gets super weird at the end, because the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg is famous for holding the very first production of The Nutcracker in 1892. Fun fact: audiences HATED IT! They thought, in particular, that it was so stupid to have children dancing in a professional production. Especially funny considering that child dancers are now The Nutcracker's biggest draw. The Mariinsky must have learned its lesson, because even though there are a few children's roles in this production, even Act I Masha and Fritz are played by full-grown adults acting like children. I love when they age Masha up for Act II so that she can do some proper dancing, but otherwise, full-grown adults acting alongside children while pretending to be their same age is a little Adam Sandler for my tastes.

This is the production choreographed in 2001 by Mikhail Chemiakin. At least right now, there's a 2007 production of Mariinsky Ballet's The Nutcracker available on YouTube:

Its portrayal starts off very comic and kid-friendly, with lots of funny noses and giant props and some pratfalls in Act I, and a low-key Voldemort-looking Drosselmeyer who obviously seethes with jealousy every time Masha and the Nutcracker Prince make goo-goo eyes at each other. Drosselmeyer also seems to maybe be in some kind of charge of the mice, who don't look very mouse-like and I really hope they're not actually caricatures of Jewish people. 

To get to the actual BONKERS part of the production, though, you have to hang on until the absolute last seconds of the performance, when Drosselmeyer raises a curtain to reveal that many of the characters are actually the treats in his candy shop. Masha and the Nutcracker Prince, who'd just finished up a joyful and romantic dance right before the curtain closed, are now revealed as the candy toppers on a giant wedding cake.

And y'all, crawling all over the cake and actively eating it as the curtain finally closes ARE THE MICE. THEY ARE LITERALLY GOING TO EAT MASHA AND THE PRINCE. 

My guess is that Drosselmeyer got fed up and figured hell, if he can't have Masha, might as well feed her to the mice.

Also notable about this production: the Arabian female lead is dressed in a skin-tight snakesuit and accompanied by snake puppets, and the poor Nutcracker Prince has to keep his horrifying Nutcracker mask on for an ungodly long time. There's also a DVD of a different Mariinsky Ballet Nutcracker production, originally choreographed by Vasily Vainonen in 1934, that's more wholesome than weird. Syd and I saw this in the theatre with her ballet buddies one year, and it's adorable.

New/Adventures: Nutcracker!

So, were you thinking that it might actually be easier in the long run just to traumatize your children with a terrifying Nutcracker production as young as possible so that they don't ask for expensive ballet lessons? 

Well, have I got the Nutcracker for you! 

Instead of casting children, let's cast adults who make big, childish movements and huge facial expressions in an uncanny valley version of childhood.

Instead of setting the scene in a wealthy household hosting an opulent Christmas party for all their rich friends, let's have Act I take place in an orphanage with a co-ed dormitory full of miserable adult-children. The grown men acting like little boys will also wear nightshirts that expose their legs to the upper thigh.

Instead of giving the kids dolls and drums and a random nutcracker, let's give them creepy shit like a ventriloquist's dummy and a working pistol. Fritz will literally shoot an orphan with the pistol, and the dummy will come to terrifying life just before the orphans revolt and one of them saws the head off of the headmaster, who is dressed in leather and wields some kind of stick... a riding crop, maybe?

Welcome to New/Adventure's Nutcracker!, choreographed in 1992 by Michael Bourne. It's not for children! 

Again, we watched this production several years ago on YouTube, in what must have been an excellent year for Nutcracker bootlegs, but right this second it's also available via a bootleg on Vimeo. 

If you don't watch the production with your kids, it's got some interesting moments that make it pretty fun. I can't completely figure out if it's Clara's little orphan buddy or the ventriloquist dummy who eventually is reincarnated as the Prince, but regardless, he's reincarnated shirtless, and their pas de deux would be charming and low-key sexy if the full-grown adult playing Clara didn't have to keep making those weird little kid faces and gestures. The overture to Act II that's normally danced by very little children playing angels or trees is danced by adults with wings wearing pajamas. Maybe they're dead orphans? It's also fun seeing how much sexual innuendo and camp and just plain bizarreness they can work into all of the Divertissements. 

In the end, Clara wakes back up in her orphanage, but who's hiding in her bed? Why, it's that hunky Prince again! 

Also notable about this production: Clara gets to dance blissfully with a whole troop of shirtless dudes, and she looks like she's having a fabulous time. The Arabian and Chinese dances aren't at all racist. And the Russian dance is, I think, a gay football theme?

Okay, I thought that I was going to monologue about all of my weird Nutcracker finds all in one place, but I actually have to go put a certain Mouse's hair up in milkmaid braids and then change into my black clothes for backstage and then drive her to campus for her stage rehearsal and then go chaperone the Party Scene children during dress rehearsal while my Mouse fights a battle and then check all the Party Scene kids back out to their parents and then collect my hopefully victorious Mouse and then drive us home and then eat Pizza Rolls in bed while watching hockey and then fall asleep without washing my face, so let's talk about weird Nutcrackers again later, okay?

And if you write your PhD thesis on the subject, send me a copy!

Upcycled Hair Accessories: Stashbust a Scrunchie

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

My favorite stashbusting projects are the types of useful accessories that you can never have too many of. You can never have too many zippered pouches, cloth napkins, fabric baskets, or pillowcases, and once you're used to making them, you can whip them out quick as lightning without having to refer back to the instructions. 

Scrunchies are one of my favorite stashbuster projects. Like the other projects that I mentioned, scrunchies are very forgiving, so you can fudge fabric dimensions as needed to fit your scraps. Scrunchies look cute in a wide variety of patterns and prints, from the classic to the novelty. And, for those of us with long hair, scrunchies are EMINENTLY useful! Toss a couple in every bag you own (bonus points if you store them inside a zippered pouch!) and a couple more in all your glove boxes, and you'll be set for any scenario. I lead a Girl Scout troop, and I keep spare scrunchies in my troop first aid kit and my troop campfire kit, too. Long hair will never keep MY Girl Scouts from adventure! 

To make a scrunchie from your stash fabric, you will need the following:

• fabric piece, approximately 24"x4". Remember how I said that you can fudge fabric dimensions as needed with this project? I did not lie! I've gone as short as 18" to use up the last bit of Halloween print, and as narrow as 3" to squeeze one last project out of a favorite dinosaur print.
• elastic, approximately 1/4" by 7". Again, though, use what you've got! I've made scrunchies using everything from FOE to 1/2" elastic to buttonhole elastic. You may need to adjust the length of the elastic if you've altered the length of the fabric piece. If your elastic can be tied by hand, reserve an extra inch for knotting it. If your elastic is too wide to hand-knot, you'll use that inch to stitch the two ends together.
• measuring, cutting, and sewing supplies. Don't forget the safety pin!

Step 1: Measure and cut your fabric and elastic pieces.

Novelty prints are the best for scrunchies! My teenagers think that scrunchies are so silly (I lived through the 1990s, and I know that they're right!), and they're happy to lean into the silliness when I surprise them with scrunchies made from the last bits of their favorite novelty prints. But other types of fabrics also make surprisingly successful scrunchies. I adore using thrifted sheets to back quilts, and the folded and hemmed top of a thrifted sheet makes an excellent scrunchie. Dress shirts and skirts are other good fabric options. 

My favorite dimension for the perfect scrunchie is, as I mentioned in the Materials section, 24"x4". But I'd go as short as 18" to use up a good scrap, and I'd absolutely rather go longer than toss a couple of inches of fabric in the trash. 

Cut your elastic to about 7", which allows for a .5" overlap on each side to either tie or sew the two ends of elastic together. I'm using up the last of some stash FOE for the scrunchies in this tutorial, but any elastic approximately 1/4" wide should work well.

Step 2: Make a fabric tube.

 Fold the fabric in half lengthwise, and iron to crease.  Sew the open long edge shut using a 3/8" seam to create the tube.  

Iron the seam open.  

Fasten a safety pin to one end of the tube. Use the safety pin as a bodkin to turn the tube right side out, then iron again so that your tube is tidy and flat.

 

Step 3: Insert the elastic.

 Fold one end of the tube to the inside about 1/2", and iron to crease.  

Fasten the safety pin to one end of the elastic, and use it as a bodkin to pull the elastic through the tube. Scrunch the fabric as you go so that it's scrunched into the middle, leaving both ends of elastic clear. 

If the elastic is narrow, you can sometimes get away with tying an overhand knot to connect the two end pieces. Otherwise, overlap the two ends by .5" and sew them together with the stitch of your choice.

 

Step 4: Close the tube.

Overlap the two ends of the tube, with the cuffed end on the outside. Sew them together with a sturdy straight stitch. 

Fluff up the scrunchie until all the scrunches are evenly distributed around the circle. 

DIY scrunchies make fun additions to Christmas stockings and Easter baskets, and care packages to your favorite young adult. Out of the six scrunchies that I made in this short afternoon's work, two are for my teenagers to wear as Halloween accessories (in my family, Halloween season starts in September!), two are going into their Christmas stockings, and two are going to hang out in my secret bin of presents, waiting for a special occasion yet to come.

100+ Gift Ideas for Teenagers Who May or May Not Actually Like Stuff

 

One of my teenagers is like me in that she likes lots of different things, and is SO easy to shop for! The other teenager is like my partner in that she doesn't want a lot of stuff, doesn't use a lot of stuff, has only a few specific passions that she's deeply invested in but that don't utilize stuff, and can never seem to tell you more than a couple of things that she'd actually want or need.

The kids never notice that I give them the same number of presents of the same approximate monetary value, but *I* do, and every year I have to pare my list for one kid waaaay down while searching unto the ends of the earth for things to add to my other kid's list. 

Like, does anyone else have that specific problem with a TEENAGER?!? It low-key boggles my mind. Must be nice not to feel like you have a gaping void in your soul that can only be filled with stuff, I guess...

Here, though, is stuff that I've found that my teenagers DO like. One teenager likes pretty much all of this stuff, and the other is pickier, but nevertheless, I can always find something for each of them within these general categories.

Blankets and Stuffies

Teenagers still like this! Even if your teenager isn't a stuffed animal person still, EVERYONE is a fuzzy blanket person. And there are so many super weird, novelty blankets and stuffies out there in the world that even if your teenager doesn't love fluff, you can find something they'll love that just happens to be fluffy.

• blanket with a good quote on it. These aren't as wild as novelty prints, but still let you get something that fits a kid's specific personality. I like this company that puts a long excerpt of a favorite book on one side of a blanket; the other side is a sort of faux fur, so it's VERY soft! Or there's a shop on etsy that makes blankets that look like the first page of a book. 
• fluffy accessories. I feel like all the kids like fluffy things. When I was in college, we used to call these bed pillows "husbands," but I think people are less weird these days. 
• novelty fleece blanket. These are light and don't take up a ton of space, but both my teenagers happily snuggle in them when we're hanging out together. Last year, I bought everyone a fleece blanket relating to each person's individual fandom as a Christmas Eve present--Hot Topic had the best prices at the time, and right now it looks like they're on sale again!
• stuffies. One of my teenagers owns a stuffed six-foot loaf of French bread, and she sleeps with it every night. I've got another very strange and very long stuffie already wrapped for her. The other teenager likes stuffies so much that their existence all over their shared bedroom has become quite the point of contention between the siblings, so I've had to cool off a bit on giving her stuffies... unless/until I find her something truly great, of course!
• weighted things. Weighted blankets are wildly soothing, and weighted stuffies feel bizarrely comforting to hold. You just have to keep an eye on the weight and size of your blankets--the younger kid picked out a weighted Minecraft blanket from Target a few months ago (yes, she does openly admit that she is actually a nine-year-old boy...) and we were reduced to helpless giggles when she pulled it out of the package and the full blanket was approximately half her size--indeed, the perfect size for a nine-year-old boy!

Clothes

Christmas is a great time to give a teenager that stupid trendy clothing item they've been longing for but you don't want to pay your hard-earned money for unless it's an Occasion. Only one of my teenagers is into clothing like that, so I force myself to buy her a couple of things from her wish list every holiday. My favorite clothes to buy the kids, though, are fun items printed with inside family jokes and other stuff they like.

• hoodies. All the teenagers like hoodies. Even my very minimalist teenager who hates clothes has a hoodie that references a favorite vacation we took together, although she wouldn't want anymore than one. Fortunately, my other teenager shares my firm conviction that the more hoodies, the better! I like to buy her ones with really niche graphics from our shared interests, and ones that are branded with places we've visited together.
• wearable hoodie/blanket. Have you seen these? They are WONDERFUL!
• winter/outdoor gear. Okay, it's probably not the most fun to receive, but if you live anywhere cold, your teenager absolutely wants gloves that are heated and/or touchscreen compatible, warm socks, base layers, wooly hats, and possibly a new coat if you didn't score one at the start of the season. My teenagers both like these mitten/fingerless glove combos, which are a nice way to keep your fingies warm while maintaining manual dexterity when needed. On a personal note, I have been waging a multi-year campaign to get the older kid to consent to replace the stained old puffer coat that she's been wearing since her final growth spurt. Seriously, would it kill her to just let me buy her a nice, plain, unassuming Carhartt coat? I promise that after that, I'll never pester her again about coats! I'm not even going to insist on the high-visibility model that I actually want to buy her so she doesn't get snatched by a human trafficker at college and end up being shipped across the world in a Wayfair box...
• wish list stuff. For my teenager who likes clothes, I just pull a couple of things off her wish list of techwear, Dr. Martens, slouchy sweaters, and the like. An easy win, although somehow less satisfying to me when I don't have to agonize over the selection.

College Stuff

OMG kitting a teenager up for dorm life is SO EXPENSIVE! I swear I did NOT get this much help or do this much shopping when I was preparing to go off to college, but was that neglect or because it was a different time? No clue, but now that I have this experience to do over again (because that's the great thing about having two kids!), I'm parceling out whatever I can across these last two years of Christmases, birthdays, and Easter baskets:

• appliances. The big kid only needed an electric kettle for her to be good to go, but I know other students who are bringing all kinds of fun appliances, from Brita pitchers to personal smoothie blenders. I could see buying the younger kid a mini fridge and a mini rice cooker, in particular, with the assumption that they'll still be good to go with her to college.
• backpacks and bags. The big kid is going to be doing a LOT of walking at college, so she's got a messenger bag for hauling just a few things, she still needs a nice, big backpack for hauling all her textbooks and her laptop, and I'm going to sew her padded cases for her laptop and her ipad. I really like this laundry backpack, but I couldn't convince her to give up her old Army surplus laundry bag for it--we'll see how she feels after a few weeks of hauling her clothes up and down the stairs!
• dorm necessities. I bought each person in the family their own color-coded set of washcloths, hand towels, and bath towels back in that wild first wave of COVID, so that's what the big kid is bringing with her to college. She needed a good bathrobe, though, and desk stuff like a lamp, bookends, schools supplies organizer, etc. 
• electronics. Up until the big kid's last birthday, the kids shared a laptop, and up until this coming Christmas, they share a cell phone. Don't spill my secret!

DIY Kits

Even if your kid is picky about how they spend their time, there are so many DIY kits in the world that there's definitely one that will appeal to them. We do these a lot as "independent but in the same room" family activities, where we're each working a puzzle or doing something with our hands while listening to one of our favorite podcasts together. 

• craft kits. If your kid is at all crafty, find something new to expose them to. One of my teenagers turned out to really love the latch hook kit I bought her last Christmas, and we all spent that first pandemic summer busily working away on our paint-by-numbers. Cross-stitch, diamond painting, embroidery and resin art are also fun new crafts to try. Or, sneak in some STEM!
• food kits. Make them good ones, though, not ones marketed to children. One year, for instance, I found a kit to make authentic gummies, not the weirdly flavorless kind that come in children's kits--I can't remember where I bought that kit, but it was marketed to professional cake decorators and it was LEGIT! Boba tea kits, sushi making kits, mini waffle makers and fun waffle mixes, and starter kits to make any of their favorite foods are always fun.
• LEGO set. There's definitely a LEGO set your kid will like, even if they're not super into the LEGOs themselves. My teenager who loves LEGOs will love anything, but my teenager who's not particularly into LEGOs would still love anything Nutcracker or Avengers-themed.
• pinback button maker. If you've got a kid who loves to draw or collage, this could be an easy win. This metal American-made machine is pricey, but it's the absolute best quality button maker you can buy and will last forever, so you can ebay it if they get tired of it.

Fan Merch

One of my favorite things about kids is the entirety of their weird and varied interests. Dinosaurs, My Little Pony, slime, The Avengers, mud pies, Cavetown... it's just so fun to see what kids get into! And it keeps being fun and interesting even as they grow all the way up. These days, one kid is a Fullmetal Alchemist completionist who has to read and watch everything in the "correct" order, and the other kid has very firm opinions about the remastered versions of David Bowie's songs compared to the original versions. To be honest, I keep the remastered version of "Rebel Rebel" on my Favorites playlist just to annoy her...

• bands. You're in luck if your kid is into vinyl, and in even better luck if your kid is into an older band. My teenager who loves music isn't into vinyl and wouldn't want CDs (which... gasp!), but she's going to flip out if I manage to not get sniped and actually win the auction for a certain vintage concert T-shirt I'm trying to buy her off of ebay. If teenagers are into bands, they generally like band T-shirts and concert T-shirts, even if they didn't go to that concert. If the band is popular enough to have fan-made swag on etsy, you can buy some really fun stuff there. 
• manga and/or anime. It's SO easy to buy for your teenager if they're into this! You can buy them the complete collection of their favorite manga, the complete series of their favorite anime, authentic Japanese merch, or fan-made merch from etsy. 
• books, movies and/or TV shows. Don't buy them a hoodie with the name of their favorite book or movie on it; instead, buy them something that looks like it comes from the world that the book or show exists in--fan-made items in Hogwarts school colors (please don't buy anything officially licensed because that TERF Rowling does not need anymore of our money), Disneybounding items, etc. My teenager still loves Percy Jackson and still wears the Camp Half-blood hoodie I gave her years ago, and I have a couple of ideas for more Percy Jackson things I can make for her this year.
• pajama pants. For some reason, they're the exception to the rule that wearing something with your favorite show's name on it is corny. The cornier the pajama pants, the better! I'm high-key obsessed with this brand that I discovered at Hot Topic once upon a time. 
• theme parks. This doesn't have to be Disney! One of my teenagers is especially into the small indie theme park that we visit each summer, so after this year's visit I got onto their online gift shop and bought her a couple of souvenirs.

Gross Motor Skills Support

Teenagers still need a lot of support for active movement to burn their energy and keep them off your couch. The kids both have quite strenuous near-daily extracurriculars, but it's still nice to encourage additional exercise and support for an active lifestyle.

• things for flopping. Our giant bean bag works either for their bedroom or for a family space. It takes up SO much room, but everyone, including the pets, absolutely adores it. It's great for flopping and leaping upon, but it's also just a place to lie that isn't my couch. Big floor cushions and other interesting seating choices for their work areas are also good for encouraging different ways to sit and lie, reinforcing flexibility and strength.
• things for swinging and bouncing. I wasn't sure if this indoor trampoline would be a hit, but one of my teenagers, especially, is on and off this thing multiple times a day. The teenagers don't use their aerial silks much anymore, but it's still a huge hit when their friends are over. And hammocks are eternally awesome!
• outdoor stuff. The slackline that I bought a few years ago never took off, but the big kid adores her kayak and both kids love this crazy-expensive but equally crazy-fast sled. Snow accessories are still popular, and camping supplies aren't perhaps the most fun, but we get a LOT of use out of them.
• wheels. A bicycle, scooter, rollerblades, or roller skates are still fun, especially if at least one of the adults is also kitted up so you can go together.

Stuff for Their Hobbies

This can be pretty niche, since it depends on what your teenagers are into. My horseback rider wants things like barn boots, work gloves, a new helmet, or breeches. My ballerina wants new leotards and dance skirts and tights, resistance bands, and turn-out discs. Or, you can get a kid something that might extend a hobby they already like, or might encourage them to try a new hobby.

Vibe Stuff for their Personal Spaces

I would have flipped out as a teenager to have all of the options teenagers these days have for awesome sensory stuff for their bedrooms. Like, I thought my CD player and my collage wall were the height of bedroom vibes!

• beds and bedding. My teenagers are both getting bedroom upgrades this winter--one of them is over the moon with joy, and the other one DNGAF because her actual bedroom for the majority of the next four years will be in Ohio! An eminently DIY-able canopy bed frame is on the excited teenager's wish list, and although that's more of a home improvement project than a Christmas gift, canopy curtains and new bedding ARE good gifts! 
• lava lamp, bubble lights, fake aquariums, etc. It's nice to give teenagers something soothing to look at. One of my teenagers would love an aquarium but you know how I feel about delicate pets, so I kind of think a faux aquarium like this would be a good compromise.
• music. Only one of my teenagers is into music, but she is very much so! She only streams it, though, so Bluetooth is the reigning monarch in our house. Fortunately, you can do ALL THE THINGS with Bluetooth, from whole sound systems to portable speakers to stuff for the pool and bathroom.
• twinkle lights. I guess we've gone beyond buying a couple of extra sets of lights at Christmas and hanging them around your bed. Now the kids can get LED lights that change colors and move to their music.

What kind of stuff do your teenagers like to receive, especially if they're not super into stuff? I'm always on the lookout for more good ideas!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!