Hello, mates! Now that we’ve wrapped up sharing the details of our Narnian Adventure party, it’s been a bit quiet over here. I still have a lot of content to share from past parties and such (not to mention all of the new things ahead in the coming months); I’ve just been trying to figure out how and in what order that should be done. Besides that, lately my focus has shifted into getting everything in readiness for the holiday season. I’ve mostly been working on knocking out my Christmas shopping and burning the midnight oil sewing several princess costumes for my little girl’s Christmas. So far, I’ve fought against the temptation to decorate or listen to any of the music, but if you’re one of those people: no judgment here. I have a suspicion I’ll end up succumbing by the weekend.
But even though my sights have been largely set on Christmas, I’ve been feeling especially compelled not to neglect Thanksgiving. We all know this holiday gets the short end of the stick and that saddens me. I’ve been as guilty as anyone in contributing to this, so this year I wanted to do better. Now–me being who I am and not liking to do anything halfway—I started brainstorming ways to incorporate as many Thanksgiving themed activities into our week as I could. And that’s when I got overwhelmed. Like I’m talking major stressed out because I was realizing I just couldn’t do it all.
I wallowed in my self-loathing for a little while until I finally realized what should have been obvious: that all my efforts in “cultivating gratitude” were causing me to be stressed out and model literally the exact opposite for my kids. Anyone else relate?
So I threw all that out the window and simplified our plans big time. Once the expectations and burden of having everything Pinterest picture worthy were gone—wonder of all wonders—-we ended up having the best week.
So with all of that being said, if you’re like me and want to incorporate some Thanksgiving related activities into your coming week but want to keep it super simple, I thought I’d share a few of the things we’ve been doing.
We read books.
These were just books we already had on hand. I was tempted to go out and buy some new ones but honestly, these were sufficient. I’m hoping to add to our collection every year though.
We colored.
I found these Thanksgiving Scripture verse coloring pages and we took time each day to read and talk about them while we colored.
We made a Thankful Tree
As soon as I came across the idea on Pinterest, I knew it was something we would all enjoy. We cut down a branch from our backyard and some leaf shapes out of cardstock, and then I let my children have free reign to paint them however their little hearts desired. They had vastly different ideas on the style of leaves they wanted (one wanted as realistic as possible and the other wanted rainbow leaves) so we ended up with all different styles and colors.
Later that night I gave them some markers to decorate them more. And then we took turns naming and writing things we were thankful for and hanging them on the tree.
At the end of the week I’m planning on making a little book with all of their coloring pages and thankful leaves. Other than that, we’re probably going to save any more activities for another time and just focus on the heart of gratitude with a few Scripture verses.
And we may just have a little Christmas music in the background 🎄🎶🤫
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