The holiday season is all about making holiday memories with loved ones. Above & Beyond wants to help you make the best of the days you have to make these memories so we’re focusing on easy ideas to enjoy your time together.

Making Holiday Memories with Loved Ones Who Have Failing Health

When we have someone who may not be in the best of health it can be even more important for us to create memories as often as possible. In particular for those who are faced with dementia, physical disabilities, or dealing with the loss of a loved one, it’s important to try to make the most of your time together.

The holidays are a wonderful time to focus on love, life, and laughter. These ideas focus on keeping life simple while making holiday memories.

Activities for Making Holiday Memories

Video Memories – With today’s technology making video memories couldn’t be much easier. Take the time to video everyday moments in life during the holidays and not just the actual holiday itself.
Scrap-booking – Find pictures from all generations and create a holiday scrapbook together. Looking at the old photos will provide a great opportunity to spark conversation and memories.
Music – Set aside an hour or so to simply sit with your friends and family and enjoy singing along with the Christmas we’ve all grown to love and look forward to.
Movie Night – A wonderful way to make “family time” with all of the generations is to have a family movie night one day a week. Let each generation pick their favorite movie to watch. Seniors will enjoy the time set aside for them; while children will enjoy family time.

What’s Christmas without Cookies?

If you’re dealing with a family member who needs home health care, you most likely aren’t thinking about “holiday baking.” But this no-bake, semi-homemade, store bought cookie decorating section could be the answer you need!

Cookie Decorating – Holiday baking may be stressful. Try using bakery or store bought cookies to help reduce the stress of having to bake yourself.
1. Order undecorated sugar or cut-out cookies from a local bakery
2. Bake cookies from cut & bake, refrigerated rolls of cookies
3. Use a store bought mix (box or bag) to bake cookies at home
4. Use store bought cookies such as Oreos^®, Nutter Butter^® Cookies, Holiday Style Shortbread, & Lorna Doones^® to decorate (see our resources below)
5. Buy containers of frosting instead of making your own
6. Purchase tubes of decorating frosting
7. Buy a variety of sprinkles and edible decorations for your cookies

Online Resources for Holiday No-Bake & Decorated Store Bought Cookies

Better Homes & Garden offer some great ideas for no-bake holiday treats.
Readers Digest offers these ideas for decorating store bought cookies any time of year.
Elegant looking Double Candy Cane Oreos^® are easy to make.
This blog even tells you… decorating store bought cookies for the holidays is not cheating!
Create Santa cookies with Nutter Butter^®
These Christmas mice are a little more complicated but once again require no baking because you use store bought ingredients like Oreos^®.
These Olaf (from the movie Frozen^™) cookies are quite easy to make with Nutter Butter^® Cookies! Of course you can always make regular snowmen too!
Reindeer cookies are easy to make with Nutter Butter^® Just add some chocolate to dip them in, pretzels for antlers, M&M^®s for a nose, and some purchased edible candy eyes.

These are just a handful of the ideas available online! Don’t forget that you can buy inexpensive tins of holiday shaped sugar cookies or shortbread and simply decorate them. All you really want to focus on is an easy way for making holiday memories with friends and family!

Happy Holidays From Above & Beyond

Above and Beyond wishes you a safe and happy holiday season. Remember to focus on making holiday memories and limiting the stress by keeping things simple.

Photo by Erik Cleves Kristensen