Thanksgiving Eve projects

Every year on Thanksgiving eve the girls and I make Indian headdresses and hand print turkeys. While being fun crafts, they also create a small record of how the girls have grown that year. The girls love to try on last year's headdresses and see how much bigger their turkey is this year. We use the turkeys to decorate the kitchen and the girls and I wear (yes Pete thinks i am weird) our headdresses while we watch the parade. Pj's, hot chocolate, a construction paper headdress and the Macy's day parade, to me that is Thanksgiving morning!

As I take time thinking about the many things I am thankful for this year. You come to mind. I am so grateful that when I send out this blog, you read it! Thank you for your encouragement, comments, ideas and support. I have loved making new bloggy friends and connecting with old friends around the world through this blog. You are all a great blessing to me.

3 ways to inspire gratitude this Thanksgiving …

I bet some of you who read my last few posts regarding Christmas prep thought that I must be skipping right over Thanksgiving this year. Never fear, I am not! I love Thanksgiving. I love that our country was the first country to set aside a day just to give thanks. I love that Thanksgiving comes right before the rush of Christmas. It is the perfect time to count our many, many blessings before we start into the commercial Christmas season of "I want, I want, I want."

Each year, I make a point to have some sort of activity with the girls to talk about what we are Thankful for. That activity creates something visual that I leave up into after Thanksgiving. I often try to incorporate whatever we have created into our Thanksgiving dinner decorations. Here are three of my favorites. I hope they bless your family this Thanksgiving.

The Thanksgiving Tree: Take a tree limb and put it in a decorative pot. Support the limb with floral foam or rocks. Cut out paper leaves and string each leaf onto a ribbon or raffia bow. Set aside some time as a family to talk about the importance of Thanksgiving and of having a spirit of gratitude. Write down what each family is grateful for on the leaves. Hang the leaves on the tree. I like to leave some leaves blank so that guests will be able to write on them on Thanksgiving day. During dinner, take all the leaves off and read them out loud. ( I will post a picture of our later this week – it is so pretty!)

I'm Grateful You're Here Mats: Make a paper placemat for each person who will be part of your Thanksgiving dinner. Have your kids prominently write the person's name on the placemat, decorate the mat with drawings, stickers and pictures of that person. List things that you are grateful for in that person. For example: Grandma, thank you for taking me to the library each week. Take the finished placemats to an office supply store or Kinkos to have them laminated. They may not be the fanciest placemats you could use on Thanksgiving but they are surely the most meaningful!

Grateful Turkeys: These little turkeys remind me of elementary school. I use to love making them every year. Make a turkey using a pinecone for the body and construction paper cut out for the head, weird red neck thing (I am sure it has a name) and the feathers. Before your children put in the feathers, have them write something on each one that they are thankful for. You can also do this for your family members, similar to the placemats, and have each person's turkey sitting on their plate when they arrive on Thanksgiving.

I hope your family enjoys these ideas. I would love to hear about projects your family does in preparation of Thanksgiving.

 

Planning for a point this year ...

A few years ago, I found myself Christmas shopping, wrapping presents and sending out Christmas cards right up until Christmas Eve. Then of course there was the cooking. We had stayed home that year and I was hosting Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas brunch. So even on Christmas Eve, I was up cleaning dishes and getting brunch prepped. Oh by the way, I had a 6 week old – so you're getting the picture here, right? Fa la la la la – t'was not the season to be jolly. In my busyness the one guest who had not been invited to our celebration was Christ. There was no room in my inn that year for Him, frankly I was just trying to stay on my feet and survive. When the gifts had been opened, the dishes cleaned up and the tree thrown out, I was left feeling empty and wondering what exactly was the point of all that craziness!

I vowed that that would be the last Christmas season spent on the work. I know Christmas cards have to be sent. My kids do have some gift expectations and I love to see decorations put up. But I had to take a serious look at what really needed to get done and what I could let go of. The first thing to go was the piles of gifts. Did you know the average American family spends $800 on Christmas every year? That's nuts. Over the last couple of years, Pete and I have significantly cut back on our giving. The girls each get three gifts from us. We agreed with cousins, aunts and uncles that non of us needed anything, so instead we give a charitable donations instead. We have cut our gift list back by about 75%, it has made a huge difference in the time we spend shopping, wrapping and waiting in line at the post office.

With our shopping cut back, the second, and maybe larger, change I made, was my planning. I realized that you can't have a Christ-filled Christmas if you don't do a lot of preplanning. That planning can't start in December; it has to start in November. Last year I started setting a deadline of when the work of Christmas will be done. Last year it was the 12^tt of December, I think I actually finished by the 14^th. This year my goal is December 1^st. By then the shopping, wrapping, and Christmas cards will be done. So then what happens you ask? Well, then we actually celebrate Christmas. Novel idea huh? Our family will go ice skating, see concerts and do advent devotions. With work not crowding our December, there will be room for Christ to be invited in to our home, our hearts and our celebration this Christmas, so come January we won't be asking, what was the point of it all!