Happy Thanksgiving!! Time to Express Gratitude

 

In the United States, today is Thanksgiving. Although I have become extremely busy in my nonblog life, I wanted to take time to talk about what I am thankful for this year. I will admit it has been a year full of frustration, sadness as well as growth and happiness. The past couple of months have been very hard on my family. 

Finding Oneself as the Pandemic is Hopefully Ending

 

Disclosure: I was sent copies of these books in exchange for honest reviews. All opinions are my own.

The last two years have been tough on everyone. Everyone I talk to seems to be struggling in some way or another. And it is not because they lost a loved one (though many have) or that they or a family member caught Covid (though many have). It is because we are all tired. Tired of masks. Tired of restrictions. But mostly tired of fighting. America seems more divided than ever. We were divided by politics and that division has grown. We have been divided by racism which is coming to a forefront. Now we are also divided about masks, vaccinations and more. If a person or company does not have the same beliefs, people are fighting, debating and at sometimes getting violent. Then add in that there is a shortage of workers. Everywhere seems to be hiring and they are operating understaffed. People's patience is not there, and they are being rude to the few people who do show up to serve us. It is such a mess. All of these things have gotten me feeling down and miserable. For 2022 I have picked positivity as my word of the year. Let's face it we all need more positivity in our lives (just not positive Covid tests).

New Year's Ideas -- Book Reviews & More

Disclosure: I was sent these books to review free of charge in exchange for an honest review. All opinions in this post are my own. I did not receive any other compensation for this review.  Some of the links are affiliate links where I will receive a small percentage of any purchases made through them at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Crafty Moms Share!

New Year's always gets me thinking. I have found memories of sleepovers with a friend and each of my sisters' had a friend. I think this was the only time I had a friend sleepover when my sisters did, so there were some fun games we all played together as well as a ginger ale toasts at midnight.  I think about my "resolutions" from the past year and what I want to do for the next year. So today I am sharing with you four books that are bring these thoughts to my mind. Let's start with Girls' Night In by Gemma Barder and illustrated by Katy Jackson.

Easy Christmas Thank You Notes -- Free Printable

Did you have a nice holiday? We had such a great time with family. It is always nice to be back with my parents and sisters and to see my nephew!! We do not get to see my oldest sister and nephew all that much since they live in North Carolina. Hazel got just about everything she wanted and some things she didn't know that she wanted (or that they existed or they would have been on her wish list). Now that Christmas is over it is time to write the thank you notes. As a beginner reader and writer I wanted to make this task relatively easy on her and me. I made up some fill-in-the-blank thank you notes.

DIY Disney's Frozen Birthday Party Thank You Notes--Free Printable

Last week we shared the fun things we did, served and decorated with for Hazel's Frozen-themed birthday party. The girls are still talking about it and how much fun they had. Hazel thinks it was the best party ever!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Today I thank God for having most of my family here together and keeping us all safe and healthy!

Hazel helping make the cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie for our feast!

Today in the United States we are celebrating Thanksgiving. This is the day to thank God for a good harvest and for all your other blessings. Supposedly it dates back to 1621 with the Pilgrims and some Wampanoag Native Americans. 

I shared some Thanksgiving books here, but we found another amazing one that I have to share! A Child's Story of Thanksgiving by Laura J. Rader is a great book that goes through the historical part of Thanksgiving including why the Pilgrims left England and Holland to the modern time of what is done. This is among my top two Thanksgiving books!

Since I am spending time with my family (and hosting/cooking) I will be busy so I am going to share with you some Thanksgiving Features from the last two Sharing Saturdays. Feel free to click on the picture to go to the Sharing Saturday where each was shared! I did a similar sharing last year if you want even more ideas!

1) From The Chirping Moms: Handprint Thanksgiving Shirts
2) From The Chirping Moms: No Bake Thanksgiving Cookies
3) From Grandparents Plus: 15+ Thanksgiving Games
4) From Waldorf By Me: Autumn Activity Round-Up
5) From The Chirping Moms: Turkey Snack
6) From Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another: Turkey Cookies
7) From Repurpose My Life: Turkey Craft with Messages of Thanksgiving
8) From Momma's Fun World: Turkey Lantern

1) From Raise a Boy: Leaf Window Treatment
2) From Like Mama ~ Like Daughter: Thanksgiving at Playschool
3) From Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another:  Turkey Cookies and More Turkey Cookies
4) From Making Boys Men: Autumn Masks
5) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Eye'm Thankful  No Picture, but worth a visit!
5) From Hey Mommy, Chocolate Milk: Mayflower Math and More
6) From Tippytoe Crafts: Thankful Turkeys
7) From Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom: Cranberry, Pomegranate Pineapple & Orange Sauce
8) From Diana Rambles: I Am Thankful for My Daughter Lunch

If you are still looking for some Thanksgiving Crafts and Activities here are some of ours from the past two years. 

Another Turkey & Winners!

First some announcements:

The winner of the Best Halloween Costume is: Sarah from Happy Lil Lamont with her daughter's beautiful flamingo costume!

The winner of the Melissa & Doug Big Rig Building Truck Play Set is Shannon F. Congratulations, Shannon!! You have three days to email me your address! Please check out Melissa & Doug's Terrific 20 List! Melissa & Doug are giving away a toy from this list every day on their Facebook page!! Plus some of the other blog's contests are still going on. There is a list at the bottom of my contest post of the other ones.

Today I thank God for not having to be in Hazel's picture with Santa Claus this year! (She even had a conversation with him on her own!!)

The other day I was poking around Pinterest and found this great turkey suncatcher from Learn Create Love. Learn Create Love even provides the printable for the turkey. I did mine a bit different however. I used contact paper and put the sticky side up over the pattern and had Hazel stick on fall colors of tissue paper squares over the pattern. Then I cut out a body from brown construction paper. We sealed the tissue paper by folding the contact paper over it. Then I cut out the tail part of the pattern from it. I glued the head/body on and added the face details.

A very easy, quick Thanksgiving craft.

More turkeys and pilgrims

You still have time to enter my current giveaway to win a Melissa & Doug Big Rig Building Truck Play Set!

There is also plenty of time to share your family's activity this week to inspire us all to have more quality family time at Happy Family Times!

Today I am thankful for being able to stay home with my daughter!

Today, we made some more turkey crafts. First though I need to share a turkey craft Hazel made at the library story time with the garden club. 

They have one from last year hanging on the bulletin board in the craft room and I fell in love with it.

When I found out they were going to do it again this year, I signed her up for it. They taught them all about seeds as well. 

Then we made some lollipop turkeys. I got the idea from Spangler Candy. I changed it a bit to what I had.

Then we tried some lollipop pilgrims. They are not what I invisioned, but they work for what they are.

So there are a few more Thanksgiving crafts for you.

Thanksgiving Books & More Turkeys

Today I thank God for my creativity!

I am also looking for help in selecting the winner of the Best Halloween Costume Contest. Just visit and click like on your favorites!

Well this year for Halloween we gave away lollipops. Usually we go through 8-10 bags of candy, so I decided to go the inexpensive route this year. And of course we got about a quarter of the number we usually do, so we have lots of lollipops leftover. Luckily they are one of Hazel's favorite candies, however we are talking three large bags. So expect many lollipop crafts in the next few months. And today I will share our first one.

I bought these foam gourds at the Dollar Tree awhile ago for some craft I saw. Well, we made one up today. We stuck the lollipops in them for the turkey tails (and some in the back to get them to stay up) and then I hot glued the other shapes on and gave them eyes, beak, etc. Very easy.

We also have been enjoying some Thanksgiving books. So far we have read the following this year.

Thanksgiving on Plymouth Plantation by Diane Stanley is I think one of my favorites ever. The story is told by two children going to visit their grandmother. Their grandmother has a special hat that allows them to travel through time. This trip the girl picked going to visit an ancestor who was a pilgrim. They got to see what life was like in Plymouth Plantation and how the first Thanksgiving went. I loved this book because it gave information I did not know. For example, Squanto is not his real name, but the name the English called him. It is a great book to give a child the real view of life in colonial times.

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey is an adorable story about eight children who go on a field trip to a turkey farm the day before Thanksgiving. They get to play with eight turkeys and all is well until someone asks the farmer about the ax they found. He tells them how he is going to kill the turkeys so they can be roasted for Thanksgiving dinner. The children become upset that their friends are going to be eaten and they sneak them away. That year the eight families have a turkey as a guest and have vegetarian Thanksgiving dinners.

Squanto and the First Thanksgiving by Joyce K. Kessel and Lisa Donze is a great story to learn more about Squanto. I always want to give the multicultural view to Hazel and being so close to Plymouth where their are demonstrations by Native Americans every Thanksgiving, I feel it is important for her to see both sides. To me the most amazing thing is that Squanto was willing to help the English after being enslaved by them twice, but he was. 

We have some more Thanksgiving stories to read and will share as we do. Enjoy!!

ThanksgivingTurkeys and Mayflower Crafts

Today and yesterday I thank God for my mother-in-law who let me sleep to feel better from a cold and for my life with which I am very happy.

Yesterday I started to fight a bit of a cold, so I took it easy. This morning Hazel and I did some Thanksgiving crafts. We took two of them from Crafts for Thanksgiving by Kathy Ross. We started by making a Mayflower puppet out of construction paper, paper towel roll, yarn and glue. You can pull the yarn to make the Mayflower go back and forth and hit Plymouth Rock. My only complaint about this craft is the masts are really not strong enough and I should have used cardstock or something stronger for them.

Hazel made the Plymouth Rock herself and cut it out. I wrote Plymouth Rock for her and she then "copied" it.

Then we made a handprint and footprint turkey. In the book it looked like this:

I gave Hazel free reign however. I traced and cut out her handprints and footprints but she glued them where she wanted.

So ours came out like this:

Then ages ago, I saw a cute idea of making a turkey from a gourd. I bought two gourds at the time for this craft, but one of them rotted. I can't remember where I saw it or what the tail was made of, so we used extra handprints.  (To be honest I haven't gone back to look where I saw the craft.)

We glued handprints to a small paper circle and then glued it on to the gourd and added eyes, beak, etc.

We are waiting for the glue to dry before we stand him up.

Today we have lunch with friends and a couple of errands to run but for the most part we will be resting and of course waiting for the next big storm to hit. Steve was suppose to have the day off, but has to work because of the predicted storm. Hazel keeps telling him she cannot wait until Saturday when he is home again.

Being Thankful Tree

Today I thank God for my loving husband!! And that he gets to rest this weekend!!

Teacher Gifts, Last Day of School

Today (Thursday) is Hazel's last day of school. It is hard to believe another school year has gone by. This is our last parent/child class together. Next year she will be in the nursery program and I will have to leave her there!! We have so enjoyed the Waldorf parent/child class the past year and a half. And we love our teacher and teaching assistant. So we made them each a gift for the end of the year. I know there have been loads of teacher appreciation gifts floating around, so I am hosting a link party to collect them all in one place. So please come share yours...after all, CRAFTY MOMS SHARE!!

I found at our local Michaels these beautiful felted bowls on clearance. I bought four of them. I used one to be a bird's nest for Hazel for play. I found a tan one as well and decided it could also be a bird's nest, so we are giving it to Hazel's teacher. Hazel painted two wooden eggs for the nest and a paper maiche bird. I made some needle felted birds as well.

For the assistant teacher we are giving her a bowl as well, but we filled it with toy fruit. I needle felted some and Hazel painted some paper maiche fruit.

Hazel is a bit jealous of the fruit bowl. I guess I need to make her some fruit for my other bowl. She wants to keep it in her kitchen. I figured they could use it as a centerpiece on the snack table when they do not have flowers.

Ok, your turn to share!! What are you doing for teacher gifts? What have you done in the past?