I love the reason why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Whenever I think about this November festivity, my mind instantly reverts back to all the Thanksgiving holidays I enjoyed when I lived at home in California.
Even now I can smell the buttery aroma of my mom’s famous monkey dough rolls, I can hear the cheery laughter and loud voices of the 20-30 people who were always crowded into our warm yet cozy home, and I can taste the sweetness of the homemade punch my Grandfather made year in and year out. I truly cherish the traditions and family togetherness this holiday consistently creates.
Now that it isn’t so easy to spend this holiday with my entire family, my husband and I are building our own traditions. One thing we like to do is focus on gratitude for the entire month.
This year, and hopefully every year hereafter, we will have a Thanks Tree and Giving Tree displayed in our house. Every night each person in the family will take a turn to write on a leaf something they are grateful for. This leaf will go on the Thanks Tree. Every night each person will also write on another leaf an act of service they have given to someone else during the day. This leaf will go on the Giving Tree. The act of service could be as simple as smiling at someone, saying “I Love You” to a family member or writing a letter to a friend.
I can’t wait to see our trees grow bigger and I am eager to see the things we will each share, especially my children. I know my heart is full of gratitude for all the tender mercies the Lord continues to bless me with on a daily basis.
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The idea for this activity originally came from Cocoa of Chocolate On My Cranium and she kindly gave me permission to tell about her family tradition on my site. If you would like to start your very own Thanks and Giving Tree, then please visit her blog to download the necessary graphics.
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For more Works-For-Me-Wednesday ideas, please visit Shannon of Rocks In My Dyer. For more Fall and Thanksgiving activity ideas, check out Scribbit’s Winter Bazaar.
We have used a large white poster board and people come and write their blessings all month long. It is really special. I had someone I know use their (like the one you pictured) every year. They just keep putting the leaves over it. They also make everyone put something on it (even the pizza man).
Blessings,
Debbie aka The Real World Martha
What a wonderful idea!
I’m SO doing that!!
I love that idea, gracias.
They are going to be so full come Thanksgiving! How fun.
I made huge trees out of flattened brown grocery sacks last year to hang in the Primary room. Every week the kids put their leaves up on the trees. It was wonderful! They sure wouldn’t let us forget each Sunday either.
I love this idea. Thanks for sharing (and including the original link).
Duckabush Blog
What a great idea! I have already printed them, ready to use tonight…
We have done a Thankful Tree for a while now, but I’ve never heard of the Giving Tree and LOVE IT! Thanks for blogging about this. (((((HUGS))))) sandi
This is an excellent idea! Thanks!
This is a really great idea!
We all should be thankful every day for the many blessings that we have. We allow circumstances get in our way of remembering or even seeing how blessed we are daily. When I wake up in the morning, I say, Father, I thank you that I woke up this morning and thank you for a wonderful day!
Thank you for sharing this with us. What a wonderful tradition!
I love this idea. We’ve done gratitude trees before but not the giving part and I like that.
So cute! What a fantastic tradition. I need to start mine pronto.
This is neat! I’m going to have my family do this! Thank you for sharing the link!
You can’t focus on gratitude enough can you? It’s so easy to forget to be thankful, I love this idea.
Great tips and links; thanks! We’re trying to focus our holiday activities on teaching my son to have a thankful heart–the Thanks and Giving trees sound perfect!
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Oh, I absolutely LOVE this idea!!! I might just have to borrow it!
What a sweet idea! Thanks for sharing it.
That is such a sweet idea! I am so glad you shared this. It’s so obvious we need to always count our blessings, yet we get so busy sometimes. This is a great reminder.
Here in The Netherlands we don’t celebrate thanksgiving.
But it’s a nice idea for christmastime too.
At oldyear we can look through all the leaves and them make one to leave things in the past and one with good wishes.
Thanks!
That is such a cute idea! Thank you for sharing it!
I love that idea, and can’t wait for my two year old to be old enough to start something like this.
What a great idea!
Thanks for sharing.
Great idea! Kids, and parents alike, can use gentle reminders to be thankful and giving.
What a great idea! In the summer I had my daughter do 6 weeks of service, my goal was to teach her what service really was…WE got a calender and she wrote what she did on each day. After the 6 weeks and right before fall began, we had an icecream sundae party as part of family night to celebrate her doing it every day.
I love this idea…THANKS!
I love that idea! I think the kids would have fun cutting out the leaves, too! The Lord knows, we need some good deed around here!
Such a nice idea.
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