Magic Reindeer Food

1 bag dried split-peas
1 (pkg, cup, handful, whatever) of something else (oatmeal, rice, vermicelli, whatever)
red food coloring
glitter

Put the oatmeal, rice, whatever you're using in a ziplock with a few drops of red food color. Squish it up until it's all red. Let it dry and mix the split-peas and a tiny amount of glitter with it and you have Magic Reindeer Food. You can leave the glitter out if you're worried about the animals getting it, but if you craft like I do it's already in the yard (and in the carpet and on the deck and in your hair) and the glitter they make now is so tiny I don't see a real problem with it, but that's my disclaimer.

Put a little bit of the mix in one of those small ziplock bags and add this tag to it:

Magic Reindeer Food
On Christmas Eve, right before bed, take the food out in the yard. Turn around three times with your eyes tightly shut and scatter the Reindeer Food. Then run as fast as you can and hop in bed and go to sleep. The glitter will sparkle to show the way and the reindeer will have a snack while Santa is at your house.

There are endless variations on not only the recipe (I haven't found any others that use the split-peas, most use colored sugar and/or hay) but also on the instructions on the tag. We made and gave these out by the dozens every year when my kids were little and they were always well received. And now the kids are beginning to pass it along to another generation. My oldest teaches a class of 8 year olds in an after-school program and she's making this for her kids, along with candy cane reindeer, if we can ever find the little tiny google eyes. We have the pipe cleaners and pompoms waiting.