I had the best time today. I volunteered to help out with my daughter’s Kindergarten class holiday party. We ate, we crafted, we sang “Jingle Bells” at the top of our lungs. So much fun!

The craft I was in charge of was helping the kids make snacks for Santa’s reindeer. It’s a cute idea. We mixed old fashioned oatmeal, red and green sprinkles, and glitter together, then scooped the “magic reindeer” food into little bags for the kids to take home, complete with instructions to sprinkle it out on the lawn on Christmas Eve so Santa’s reindeer could have a snack, too. Never mind that one of the kids ate it. It’s non-toxic And never mind that I totally freaked a few kids out when they asked what would happen if they ate it and I told them their noses would start glowing red.  Hey, you take your fun where you can get it.

But as I helped the kids scoop this concoction into baggies, I found myself thinking that this could be a really fun way to sow some flowers in your garden. Instead of the red and green sprinkles, what about adding flower seeds? I think you need the glitter, because we all know that magic is glittery. But I can totally see changing up the mixture to be a little bit of the oatmeal, and then a few scoops of the flower seed of your choice — anything that you would wintersow, or that self-sows reliably in your zone would work. I think when we make a batch of this next year (because this will become a tradition — the girls have already informed me of that!) we’ll use cosmos seeds in the mix, and the girls can sprinkle them out front, where most of the yard is taken up by flower beds anyway.

And, if you were sprinkling your reindeer food on a lawn, you could add clover seed or chamomile seed. Your lawn will be prettier, and the beneficial insects in your garden will love you for it.