We have no fireplace so I just put the stockings under the tree, in front of the gifts. Inside are nuts and candy (canes, kisses, bars) and the obligatory minneola. Also small gifts: decks of cards, lip gloss, and, this year: wind-up planes! I got them at the hardware store months ago. They are made of balsa wood, and you assemble them with rubber bands. Yes, they have propellors. You could probably get them at any hobby shop...I've even seen them in the toy aisle at most major supermarkets. Where do you live? I might have an extra!

Air Hogs are great airplanes with propellers...
this particular model is good for younger fliers.

When I was a kid there was no fireplace but Santa managed to sneak into our bedrooms and hang the stockings on the end of the bed. Sounds a little creepy now...but it meant we would spend time looking at the goodies we found there and let the parents sleep a few minutes longer.

Target has stocking hangers for the mantle for $10 (set of 2).

This is similar to what my folks did. We hung stockings on the mantle at night (and put out the cookies and milk for Santa), and in the morning we woke up to stockings at the foot of the bed with all sorts of goodies to keep us occupied.

And my mom is the queen of stocking stuffing. Our stockings always included oversized items next to the stocking. Just an amazing assortment of stuff.

Geeez, Traci- I had no idea how new this was to you until the stocking query.... Basically, in our house, a stocking magically gets filled with mixed nuts (in the shell) , tangerines, candy and small novelties such as trial-sized sundries, DVD and CD's, gift cards, etc. We don't have a mantle (we do have a Blaze-King, but no mantle) so we hang them on the wall and when they are filled we lay them near the tree.

Oh, and Indi has taken a bit too readily to this Santa thing. You're totally going to have watch your step around this little one- he's sharp! That's the magical thing about , well.....magic. Kids get it so much better than we grown-ups do.:)

My stocking never got candy and fruit (well, maybe occasionally candy, but not on a regular basis). We always just got small gifts in there. If I'm getting a gift card, that's usually where Dad puts in (yes, even now we do stockings). But we'd get trinkets, small toys, one year we got cans of silly string (note: ONE year!), jewelry, anything small enough to go in it.

My parents always put out a gift from them, labeled to us from them, and then the "Santa" gifts were put out overnight, and only had our names on them, no "from" filled out on the tags (tradition now, but I'm sure it started out as not wanting to write "from Santa" in mom's handwriting on everything).

Good stocking fillers could include things like travel games, action figures, small dolls, wooden toys, CDs, candy or fruit (or if you wanna cover all bases, you could use the "chocolate orange"), maybe some fun quirky pens or other "party favor" type gifts (go check the favor aisles of Party City to see the kind of toys I'm talking about. Things like Chinese yo-yos, heck, real yo-yos, slinkys, tops, ball-in-maze games, that kind of thing.)

Traci... perhaps you can explain to Indi that while Santa listened to him, he forgot to write it down on his "list", so it would be best for Indi to pen a letter to Santa, to make sure he remembers, and because Santa likes to get nice letters too. Maybe use the opportunity to instill a discipline for sending Christmas cards by having him send Santa a Christmas card and stick his letter in it? You can get cheap Christmas cards at stores like Walmart or Target, or also at the 99-cent store. Bulk boxes are WAY cheaper than individual cards, and some box sets include mixed cards so you can still select cards that work for the recipients.

Also, if you have not done so already, I suggest you introduce your family to the fine collection of holiday films by Rankin-Bass.

This is why God made the dollar section at Target.

I'm going to second the vote for the air hog. It has my husband and kids under it's spell - pretty easy to fly - although it's a tree magnet so bring yourself and pokin' stick to make the tree let go of it. Oh - and I hear that if the base runs out of batteries the plane will just continue to fly.... away....