40 Days of Gratitude

We are already counting down. Every year is a new challenge to make Thanksgiving meaningful. I once borrowed an idea from my sister and did a Thanksgiving Tree (think twigs in a vase and dried leaves--with thankful sayings written on them--strung and hanging on the branches.) I have also made leaf cut-outs on colorful paper--with thankful sayings on them--and taped them to the window. When the boys were preschool age, we made paper turkeys with colors feathers where we wrote, of course, the things we were thankful for. All fun and a deliberate attempt to get us to think about our blessings.

This past weekend, I was contemplating the upcoming holiday and realized we were exactly 40 days away from the Thanksgiving holiday. So I quickly made up some pages to print out and put them in some journals. I got the family involved and we prepared our construction paper covers, which we decorated with markers and glitter pens. The pages have a fill-in-the-blank-style entries for each day from October 18-November 26: "I am thankful for..." with lines to fill in and with space to draw a picture. I am excited to see what we all decide to write. I hope this might shake up our naturally complaining hearts to see the goodness all around us in a fresh way.