Make your Thanksgiving table extra “feel-good” this holiday by tucking a heart-warming surprise inside each guest’s place card!
Make homemade place cards by folding a plain 3 x 5″ index card in half (or cut your own from colored card stock). Write each guest’s name on the front and decorate with stickers or drawings, front and back. Heap these into a basket with some pens, so that incoming guests can pick a card out and discover the guest’s name. Then inside the place card, they can write an anonymous compliment to the person, telling about one trait that they are appreciate.
Want a fun alternative to Halloween? Host a Harvest Festival! It is lots of fun. My children wouldn’t trade it for trick-or-treating any day! We have been having Harvest Festivals for the past eleven years. When we first decided that Halloween didn’t fit the description of seeking after things that are virtuous, praiseworthy and of good report, we realized that we couldn’t leave a vacuum. We had to begin a new wholesome tradition to fill the gap left when we abandoned Halloween. My children look forward to Harvest Festival eagerly each year. Rather than decorating our house with ghosts, spiders and ghouls, we focus on the blessings God provides for us in a bounteous harvest. We leave these decorations up right through Thanksgiving. We learn songs such as “Come Ye Thankful People, Come” and other hymns that celebrate the harvest. God is the center of this season.
