A FUN Kids Table for Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays! I love getting up early, having my coffee while reviewing my cooking schedule for the day, and having friends and family hang the whole day before dinner. We always have our kiddos eat with the adults, but this year I also wanted to add a kids table that focused on fun and creative activities that are also in the spirit of the holiday. Head over to Honest to Nod to see how we plan to do just that!

DIY Thanksgiving Gratefulness Banner

Apparently this is just the week where we're going to pop up everywhere else around the interwebs! But I am really excited to share this particular project because I am really trying this holiday season to keep our kids focused on being grateful, spreading kindness, and helping out. So I made a printable Thanksgiving Gratefulness Banner over at International Arrivals' blog that you can download for free! We used the International Arrivals awesome Magic Puffy Pens to color in the graphic black and white pennant and write our own messages of gratefulness to add on each year. Share the love!

Project 52 -- Week 47 + Thanksgivings

Happy Thanksgiving from our turkeys to yours!! We are incredibly grateful for so many things this year and, as I did last year, thought it would be nice to share our thanksgivings. I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday -- we're staying put and having a small dinner with some family at our new home today. The kids appear to be unwilling to get out of pajamas. And I'm so, so glad. It's been a wonderful year, but a tiring fall to say the least. Here's to good food, family, and a little rest this holiday!

Rebecca's List

Arts
- Serial podcast (and Serial again and again)
- Sweetlife Festival with the kids and good friends
- All of our Italy trip, but especially the Borghese Gallery + Vatican Museums
- Banshee on Cinemax -- so incredibly violent and over the top, but we can't stop watching
- Kane's Picasso portraits

Food
- Open City brinners with the kids
- Successfully eating the ginormous Brigantine Sundae as a family at the end of summer
- Two dinners at L'abside in Amalfi
- Come il Latte gelateria in Rome
- Making Momfuku's 5.10 eggs on repeat at home
- The kids adding watermelon agua fresca to sell at our lemonade stand
- ABC Kitchen's Butternut Squash Toast (gahhhh! so good!)
- Hosting four dinner parties in four weeks (including today's Thanksgiving!)
- Successfully completing a Whole60 this summer -- can't wait to get back to it!

Places
- Taking the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
- Hense Graffiti Church 
- Jazz n' Families Day at the Phillips Collection
- Fossil finding at Flag Ponds Nature Park 
- Spark!Lab at the Smithsonian 
- Sandy Springs Adventure Park with Kane for a birthday party

Things
- My beloved Nespresso machine
- A new garmin running watch
- Our new house!
- This fantastic spiralizer
- My jade bracelet Joel brought back from China
- Our family moccasins from Positano
- Finally getting a new refrigerator!!!

Etc.
- Completing the New Year's Day Polar Bear Plunge as a family of penguins (including the kids!)
- Finishing the manuscript of my first book!!! Publishing takes forever, but it's currently slated to be out in the fall of 2016!
- Finding and becoming obsessed with [solidcore] -- so good it hurts (or it hurts so good, too). And getting Joel to go with me yesterday
- Having both kids in the same AMAZING school, which means expanding that community we love and having one drop-off and one pickup!
- Project 52 
- Family board game night
- Running with the kids in Rock Creek Park
- Whip Nae Nae kitchen dance parties
- Cam coming up with Patterned Jumpsuit Day
- Being featured on Design Mom's Living with Kids series yesterday!!!

Vacation
- Our staycation last Thanksgiving
- Last Christmas in New York
- Spending a long weekend in Oak Park with my parents by myself
- Brigantine vacation with my parents, siblings and their families
- ITALY (you can see all our posts here)

The Kids' Lists (for some reason, these two clam up when I ask them for what they are grateful. And leave it to Cam for initially citing instead to a previously compiled list)
- Kane: "my family, love, friends, my toys, my house, so many LEGOs from Nona, my mom and dad, and Cami and that's it."

- Cam: "everything that's in my {thankful} book I made at school, D-Rock, Daddy, my mommy and daddy, letting me go to Amalfi and Italy. Isn't that enough?"

Weekend Makes

I can hardly believe that Turkey Day is almost here. November has been a total blur! But if there is any holiday that calls for taking time to handmake some celebratory items, Thanksgiving is it. I also feel like we've been dealing with a lot of heavy stuff lately and trying to impress upon the kids the importance of being grateful in a serious way. So I'm looking to add a little fun back into the holiday (while still keeping the thankful spirit of course). Here's what we'll be up to this weekend in preparation for the holiday.

1 / these turkey "Mr. Potato Heads" are amazing and free! I'm definitely printing and cutting these for the kids to do next Thursday. 2 / keep the kiddos busy and get a cute decoration out of it too with this color-in banner. 3 / I still love our silly hats ideas from last year! 4 / I like that the size of the 3-D leaves on this grateful tree are just big enough to fit one word -- easy for the kids! 5 / I love this bright, mixed media art lesson on drawing a turkey. 

Thanksgivings

This past year has brought a lot of changes for us. Some sad things, but a lot of really great things for which we are incredibly grateful. Kane's new school does a terrific job of getting the kids (and in turn our whole family) to think about the things that are truly important in life, to be aware of how incredibly fortunate we are, and to think outside ourselves and about others who are not so fortunate. We've developed a new dinner time routine of having Kane announce a Quaker query (sometimes they are from his school, sometimes he makes them up), followed by a collective moment of silence, sharing our thoughts about the query, and then Cam rounds it out with a Jewish blessing. Hey, it works for us.

DIY Kids Silly Thanksgiving Hats

I'm a big fan of adding a little silly into holiday celebrations. And what better way to do that then by keeping your kiddos busy at the same time?! Enter DIY Thanksgiving hats. And I'm not talking the typical Pilgrim wear. I've always enjoyed stretching the traditional craft a bit. Circa 1987, I fashioned a 6-person Thanksgiving headdress and made my entire family wear it at one time. Jealous? So jealous, I can tell. You could try your hand at recreating that fine masterpiece, but I think these fabulous hats below would be a good second choice. Don't be at turkey -- get on it!

1 / OK, this slice (found on A Beautiful Mess) is for a pet. But dogs are kids too! And it's so absurdly cute.

2 / This awesome turkey hat is actually from a kit, but I think it'd be easy to make out of brown paper lunch bags you've already got.

3 / A pumpkin pie hat! from The House that Lars Built.

4 / I'm loving these fall leaf crowns from Handmade Charlotte.

5 / Cam would swoon over this candy cornucopia topper, also from The House that Lars Built. 

Thanksgiving Kids Table

As you saw yesterday, we've already got a jump start on holiday gifts. BUT don't forget that the turkey is up first this fall. Want a super simple, but pretty way to prepare a kids table for your Thanksgiving meal? Head on over to Honest to Nod today to check out our good friend Suzanne's ideas to help your kiddos get their gobble on. 

Artworks: Abstract Thanksgiving Decor

I'm not sure if it's because of the number of birthdays we've been celebrating, the frequency of holidays this time of year, or because mom's been busy working on decor projects for A Feteful Life, but we've been ALL OVER mom to let us make holiday decorations. We are almost worse than the commercial stores -- we can hardly wait until one birthday/holiday is over until we move on to the next.

It had been a while since we used our BioColors, so mom thought we could make some holiday stenciled banner pieces with them. It didn't work out so well. So we threw the formal ideas out the window and decided to make some abstract art by printmaking on the table (i.e., we paint the table, make a design, then press a piece of paper to it to pick up the print). We love the tree right outside our front window, which is bursting in fall foliage and so we decided to use similar colors (red, orange and gold, mostly) and made print after print onto thin rice paper. Mom then cut the rice paper into small strips and sewed them on a long strand of metallic Baker's Twine (from the Target $1 bin!) by hand. They look awesome! Mom it planning to make some more and hang a whole slew of them up for Thanksgiving. Sometimes it's the unplanned and random projects that work out the best!  

p.s. after letting her new DSLR sit in her closet since the beginning of June because she couldn't find enough time to teach herself how to use it before actually needing to use it, mom decided to just go with the flow and start. so forgive the quality of the pics around these parts as she learns on the job.

In Home Entertainment: Thanksgiving Tablecloth and Giving Thanks

We somehow ended up hosting Thanksgiving this year at our house, which is actually always fine with mom because she never actually cooks anything. I was born just about a month before Thanksgiving and mom and dad didn't want to travel. So they had everyone to our house and had a newborn excuse to have the meal catered. Mom has clung to that excuse and even took it a step further this year -- the turkey will arrive fully cooked.

So, to balance our laziness in cooking, we thought we'd work a bit on holiday decorations. Both Cami and I brought home a huge bounty of school-made decorations, which we rounded out by putting together a pretty fabulous (if I do say so myself) "tablecloth." First, mom covered our dining room table with kraft butcher paper. Then I traced the outline of a plate at each place. Cami and I worked together on the seating assignments (on which we miraculously agreed) and I wrote each person's name at their place. As Cam and I vigorously do-a-dotted the paper and stamped leaves on it (by using the do-a-dot markers as "stamp pads"), mom wrote down what we claimed to be grateful about for each person at their place. We threw in a few extra thanks for other family members, but don't worry if you don't see your name on the list below. We're grateful for you, we just have very limited attention spans for comprehending the vague idea of gratefulness.

Here are our thankful lists -- Happy Turkey Day tomorrow!

Kane
- Uncle Steve - tackling (daddy has promised us a family football game of epic proportions and directions that we can tackle Uncle Steve)
- Nona - for coming from New Jersey
- Grandpa D-Rock - sending us cards
- Aunt Veronica - tackling with me and Uncle Steve (apparently Auntie V can also be tackled)
- Daddy - laying down with me
- Mom - making this wonderful dinner (ha!, says mom)
- Cami - for coming right to her dentist appointment when I call her (she didn't even have a cavity either)
- Doggy - giving him toys
- Grammie B - going with her on vacation
- Grandpa B - letting us fish with him
- Aunt Carrie - talking with me on the phone
- Cousin Jackie - seeing him for a couple of days
- Cousin Graham - being just born
- Dr. Uncle Mark - helping me when I was sick

Cami

- Uncle Steve - tackle (Cam is ready to play, yo)

- Nona - talking to Nona

- Grandpa D-Rock - talking to D-Rock

- Aunt Veronica - tackle

- Daddy - tackle 

- Mom - tackle (we all better watch out)

- Kane- tackle

- Doggy - tackle

- Grammie B - cooking with her

- Grandpa B - playing

- Aunt Carrie - playing

- Cousin Jackie - talking

- Cousin Graham - talking

- Dr. Uncle Mark - playing

And I Want to Thank You: Giving Thanks

Inspired by No Monsters in My Bed's periodic "Grateful Lists" (oh those kiddos are going to love looking back on those later in life), momma and I decided to make Thanksgiving cards using the marbled leaves we made, some of my drawings, and things for which I was thankful.  Of course, we never quite got it all together (explaining the concept of thankfulness took a bit).  But we have the base there and we'll save the cards we made to send out next year.  Here are a few of the things I am grateful for this year:

1. "Being happy."
2.  "Because you let me help you make the cake."
3.  (about Grammie B) "Taking me to her house."
4.  (about Nona) "Chairs.  Sitting down with us."
5.  (about daddy) "For spending a lot of money."
6.  "For putting baby sister down." (for her nap)
7.  (followed by) "My sister."
8.  "For sharing at the museum."
9.  "For giving back." (as related to sharing at the museum)
10. "For dad."
11.  "Just Kaney."
12.  "The car."

Cam has yet to get much of a word in edgewise.  She seems to have taken to brute force lately to get her point across, which doesn't really match up that well with our "thankfulness" exercise.  We're sure that when she can talk better, up there on her list will be that she's thankful I piped down for a bit.

Happy Turkey Day!!! We'll catch you on the flip side!

Pumpkin You're Hollow Within: Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little early at school and my super nice teacher brought in a turkey with all the trimmings, which I totally chowed.  Also a big hit (although brought LATE by momma.  ahem.  ahem), were the pumpkin pie cupcakes I helped make.  These were super easy, used up some of that canned pumpkin we accidentally purchased a while back, and very tasty.  A word to the wise -- don't eat or serve these right out of the oven.  They are much, much better chilled with whip cream.  Like a mini crustless pumpkin pie.  Yum.