For me, Thanksgiving is about taking time to count my blessings and spend even more quality time with the ones I love.
I bought a pack of acorn jingle bells at Joanns for 75% off and I knew that I would make something fun with them.
To get into the thanksgiving mood, I had an inspiration to make a "be thankful" banner and here is what I came up with:
Using round pre-strung gift tags from Paper Dozen, I wrote some of the things we are thankful for (love, hugs, family, friends, laughter, joy, play, etc).
I used jute string and I tied the tags to it, in between the acorn jingle bells.
For a bit more color, I used a piece of red and green washi tape on two of the tags at tied one at each end of the banner.
And then I had my husband hang it with two nails :)
I also used some paper leaves we had in our craft stash to make a banner that says "Give Thanks."
I wrote on it with a black paint-pen and taped teach leaf to the wall.
Super easy and fun banner! Looking at it makes me smile.
And it reminds me how very much we have to be thankful for.
Each other especially!
With Thanksgiving drawing closer, I recently told my husband that Thanksgiving was never my favorite holiday. He said "let's re-invent it." In other words, let's celebrate it the way it feels best to us.
We have been doing that in the past few years (one year we took Sophie ice skating on Thanksgiving. This was a great idea, and there was hardly anyone else on the rink!).
As we talked about it, I realized the reason why I never loved Thanksgiving is that..... IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOD.
Let me tell you a little about how we spend our time from day-to-day:
1. Cooking
2. Eating
3. Washing Dishes
4. Repeat Step 1-3.
We don't eat out.
We make all of our meals from scratch.
Remind me again what Thanksgiving is all about? Oh yeah, everything we do already everyday!!
So, we want to make Thanksgiving more about taking a break and less about making more food.
For us that really means, making simple meals for Thanksgiving and cooking ahead.
That way, we can eat a healthy meal and have pleanty of time to go ice skating, or whatever activity we have planned for this year (no plans yet, but ice skating again sounds promising!)
How do you spend Thanksgiving? What about Thanksgiving makes you feel good?
(Sophie's depiction of a turkey. I love it!)
