Be Book Bound: Thanksgiving

Showing posts with label Thanksgiving. Show all posts

Monday, November 11, 2013

From the Book of Life: A Thanksgiving Advent Banner

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've seen it happen all over the blogosphere---where thriving blogs that I know and love just go silent. Sometimes the blogger will say something about health or family or business opportunities. Sometimes they just don't say anything at all.

When Miriam and I started blogging, we never thought we would be "one of them." But a funny thing happens when you load your wagon with a husband and kids and jobs and church and homes and holidays and laundry and life: something inevitably has to fall off the wagon to make room for everything else. Well, Miriam and I decided to keep our husbands and most of our kids, but we had to take the blog off the wagon for a while until everything shifted places and we could squeeze it into the corner.

Today I finally dug into that little corner of the wagon and found our lovely blog and its readers patiently waiting for us. Thank you. We have missed you.

While we probably aren't at full steam yet, I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the holiday hullabaloo around these parts.

Here's the thing: I look at November more as an appetizer to December. My hubby, however, loves Thanksgiving more than any other holiday. (I surmise that this is because he doesn't have to cook the Thanksgiving meal. Just a thought.) So while I've been playing Christmas music and wearing red all month, my husband has been pondering pilgrims and pumpkin pie and wishing everything Christmas would just wait its turn around here.

I don't always understand him, but I love him. So I did this. I dug into my fall bins and found some unused sprays of silk fall leaves. I snipped them off, wrote "Thanksgiving" on the front with some fabric paint, and clipped them to some twine with some mini-clothespins. The effect isn't quite as stunning as I would have hoped, but the best part is what you DON'T see.

On the back of each of the leaves, I have taped a piece of paper with a Thanksgiving activity written on it. Here is our line-up:

T - Do a Thanksgiving Mad Lib as a family

H - Write a "thank you" note to your teacher

A- Give a toy or outfit to charity

N - Do a secret service for someone in the family

K- Play "Build a Turkey" with dice as a family

S - Make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies together and share them with another family

G- Say only grateful prayers today

I - Pilgrim Trivia at dinnertime

V - Say "thank you" 10 times today

I - Play Thanksgiving Bingo

N - Make Thanksgiving Story Bracelets

G - Read a Thanksgiving Book

As much as I hate to say it, I think my husband was on to something. I'm glad we've paused for a least a moment or two to celebrate the spirit of Thanksgiving. Our little advent of gratitude and family togetherness has been nice. Really nice.

But so help me, once we've bowed our heads in prayer and tucked into the turkey, I'll be diving headlong into tinsel and ornaments. After all, you can only keep Thanksgiving on the wagon so long . . .

Sharing at . . .

Cedar Hill Ranch
Between Naps on the Porch
My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Homestories A to Z
Jennifer Rizzo
StoneGable
No Minimalist Here
Common Ground
From My Front Porch to Yours
French Country Cottage
At the Picket Fence
Stuff and Nonsense
Savvy Southern Style
It's Overflowing
Atta Girl Says

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Alcott Autumn: Blessed Banner

Then it was that Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life.
-Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

We are so blessed. I have been trying a different kind of experiment this month. A few years ago, a church leader of ours challenged us to occasionally say a prayer that asked for nothing, but only expressed thanks. I have done that from time to time and it has been a great reminder for me of how truly blessed I am. This month, in honor of Thanksgiving, every night when we kneel down in our family prayer, I only thank a loving Heavenly Father for the many blessings He has bestowed on our family. At first, it was hard to not ask for blessings; particularly for people near us who might need them. But as I thanked Him for those loved ones, I knew that he was mindful of their needs and would pour out whatever blessings he had for them, and it was okay for me to just be thankful for having them in my life. He will take care of the rest.

I highly recommend trying this out from time to time :)

So as a reminder of how blessed we are in "The real blessings of life," I made a simple little banner to that effect. I printed the letters on 8.5X11 paper

(Here are the image files if you'd like to make your own. Just remember the letters on the left are right side up and the ones on the right are upside down. This is so that you can reverse your triangles and get 4 to a page.)

(I printed on cream colored paper) And then I used some gold acrylic paint and just brushed the edges of the paper to give it an aged look.

Then I hung it from a frame with jute string and the cutest mini clothespins ever! They are only $1.50 for a pack at Wal Mart in the craft section.

And that is it. I am also thankful for kids that keep rounding up all our fall themed stuff and sticking it on this table. At least it's consistent. :)

Have a very blessed day!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Alcott Autumn: Gratitude Pumpkins

"With tears and prayers and tender hands, Mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling with reverent joy that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread. When morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out, Jo's place was empty, and the room was very still. But a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears,

and thanked God that Beth was well at last."

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women Chapter 40

I can hardly read this passage from Little Women without weeping myself into dehydration. And it isn't just the sorrow of the scene that gets me---it's the gratitude the March family feels in spite of losing their sweet Beth.

I'm fascinated by gratitude. It's spiritual, it's polite, and it's practical. I've read that grateful people even have increased longevity and improved psychological health. And in a turbulent election year, I'm willing to bet that every American---Republican or Democrat---would shake hands and agree that gratitude is a virtue. No argument there.

Then why am I not more grateful?

Why did I find myself grumbling this morning about the half-chewed pickle on the floor when I should have been thankful that I have a floor and jar of pickles in the fridge and children to chew them in the first place?

Or why did I stand on the scale and moan about my less-than-perfectly-fit body? Why didn't I say a little prayer of thanks instead that my body is healthy and strong?

It seems like wherever I can find fault, I can also find blessings. It's as though the holes in my life are really just windows to see the abundant grace that lies quietly behind it all.

The trick is being willing to see past the holes in the first place.

Gratitude isn't my strength. But I want it to be. So I'm taking a page out of Little Women today and looking for the silver lining in my half-chewed, flabby-thighed life.

Rather than regretting my decision to plant so many fertile pumpkin plants in the garden this year, I decided to round up all the pumpkins that didn't get carved for Halloween and put them to grateful use.

After considering what our family's greatest blessings were, I wrote them down on slips of craft paper with a white-out pen and then hung them on the pumpkins with twine.