I'm going to make a confession to you: sometimes the thought of Thanksgiving fills me with dread at the amount of planning and work in store for me, instead of joy for the time I get to spend with my family. I'm sure I'm not alone, nor am I the only one who feels guilty about it. It's a rough transition moving from being a kid, when holidays are magical and just happen, to being an adult and realizing how much planning goes in to making them happen!

But all is not lost. If your place mats and napkin rings don't perfectly coordinate with your cornucopia centerpiece, do you really think that Uncle Jim and Aunt Esther are really going to notice? And even if they do, so what? Let Thanksgiving be about spending quality time with the ones you love. It just so happens that you can have the best of both worlds: bonding with your children and sprucing up the house for Thanksgiving.

• The Mingo Family blog has a beautiful idea for keeping the meaning behind Thanksgiving in mind as your children count their blessings in their traced fingers. What a nice twist on the traditional hand turkey.
• Captive Mommies suggests giving each kid a disposable camera on Thanksgiving Day and letting them take pictures, then scrapbooking the results. You could even take it a step further and put all those photos into your own Memory Wall (you do have a Memory Wall, don't you?) and add to it every year.
• The Celebrated Family has a tradition every year where they make a headband and a hand turkey and compare them to all the previous years' efforts to see how they have grown. What a sweet way to see how the years have passed.
• Free Printable Fun not only has paper dolls and crafts, but pilgrim math worksheets and A-B-C cards. Wow! (Found via Homeschooledyear.com.)
• Moms in a Blog suggests letting kids at Thanksgiving dinner decorate their own flower pots and plant seeds in them - then give them as Thanksgiving gifts to residents at a local nursing home. That's a lovely idea.
• Although Michelle at Scribbit had an initially gruesome experience with critters in her acorns, the end result - an acorn wreath - is handsome.

Posted by Dee | tagged: Thanksgiving, craft