Thanksgiving Archives

BLESSED Thanksgiving Part 3: It’s All About The Food!

3 Mins Read

It’s the weekend before Thanksgiving so I’m getting my grocery shopping list together for all my holiday favorites. Here’s what’s on our menus for Thursday.

#1 Edible Decorations: The Cookie Bunting

The cuteness of a pennant banner + the yumminess of sugar cookies. This banner does double duty as holiday decorations and after dinner treat. You can find the tutorial here.

#2 Treats for the table / Place card holders

There will be rioting in the streets if my kids don’t get to make up a bunch of these turkeys to use as place holders. There’s so many ways to dress these little guys up and it keeps little hands busy. You can check out the details here.

#3 Sides: The Turkey Veggie Tray

I found this ridiculously cute turkey veggie platter from Eating With Food Allergies. I’m excited to add this fun platter to the regular stuffing and potatoes, and know this will probably steal the show.

#4 Main Course: CREAM BAKED TURKEY

You heard me: Cream. Baked. Turkey.

Ohgoodheavens.

You may never go back to making a traditional bird again. We haven’t.

And despite the lousy blogging-at-midnight pictures, you can see how easy this is to make.

1. Dice your turkey in 1” cubes (white meat, dark meat, both – you can even use chicken.)

2. Mix equal parts flour + seasoning (seasoning salt/garlic powder) and dredge the chicken.

3. Brown quickly in a skillet with a little butter or oil and drain on paper towels. You DO NOT want the turkey cooked all the way through – just browned on all sides. Fill a glass baking dish 2/3 full with turkey pieces.

4. Cover turkey with heavy cream or half-and-half. Cover and bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Remove foil and bake for 15 more minutes.

And then … holy cow.

I wish I had a picture for you but it gets inhaled within seconds of it being placed on the table. The end result is turkey that has absorbed all that cream and is fall-apart tender. It’s practically an emotional experience. Try it – you’re going to love it!

#5 Dessert: PUMPKIN LUST PIE

I can’t wait to try this Pumpkin Lust Pie from Sweet Treats & More! The recipe calls for a box of Jell-O Pumpkin Spice pudding. If you can’t find it (I couldn’t here in Utah), mix 1/2 c. pumpkin puree and 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice into a batch of instant butterscotch pudding. I know it sounds weird, but trust me … it’s the next best thing and soooooo yummy.

Dang it. I’m so hungry now.

That’s what’s on my menu.

What special recipes are you guys serving for your Thanksgiving?

In Home and DIY Projects

BLESSED Thanksgiving Part 2: How To Make A Skirt From A Fitted Sheet in 10 Minutes Flat

4 Mins Read

I wanted to show you what my girls will be wearing for Thanksgiving this year and the funny, awesome way it all came together.

Happiest little accident ever.

And total tender mercy.

I was digging through my stash looking for inspiration when I pulled out this torn, king size fitted sheet. We had this on our bed for years before it finally wore a hole in the center. This sheet was huge (and because it was fitted), never really fit well on my shelf. Since I was drawing a blank on the Thanksgiving outfits, I decided I’d at least clean up the stash a bit and cut the sheet into smaller pieces so that it would store better. I grabbed my scissors, cut the sheet into quarters, and then went to cut off the elastic that ran around the entire thing.

And I stopped dead in my tracks … and just started at the elastic … and wondered if it was a mistake to cut it all off … what if I needed that elastic later ….?

While I was thinking, my daughter the genius picked up one of the ragged pieces and said, “Look Mom! It’s just like a skirt!”

Light bulb.

And from that happy little (divine) accident, I wound up with skirts for my girls in less than ten minutes.

Want to know how?

Seriously … it was that simple.

And if you use bias tape or some type of binding on the bottom, you can skip the hemming part all together – score!

So since I didn’t spend all that time prewashing, trimming, measuring, sewing, adding elastic, etc., I had lots of time to work on the details.

**And quick picture disclaimer — my girls kept bugging me to wear their new skirts so I let them play around while I finished up projects. Consequently, these don’t look freshly pressed anymore. Sorry for the wrinkles. **

You could so do ANYTHING with this basic skirt, but I figured the best thing to add to a happy little accident was a happy little tree … or at least the happy little leaves from the happy little trees.

{Sorry – I can’t stop thinking of these as “The Bob Ross Skirts” and smile every time I see them.}

I grabbed the fat quarter bundle I won a few months ago …

… and cut a bunch of 3.5” x 3.5” blocks with leafs cut out of the centers. I cut my blocks and shapes using my Silhouette, but this is easy-peasy to trace and cut using sewing shears or a craft knife. The blocks were sewn together with a 1/4” seam allowance …

… and the top and bottom edges were pressed under for a clean finish. The whole strip was sewn to the bottom edge of the skirt.

I hand-cranked my sewing machine around each leaf cutout, but you could sew this by hand, too.

I love the creamy flannel poking through the cut-outs. Yummy.

And don’t think the leaf shapes and scraps went to waste. I just made another skirt.

I stitched the scraps together to make a long, 1” wide strip. Then I ironed the strip in half and then in half again to make my own faux bias tape to finish the bottom edge. The leaves were stitched in place with a lot of hand-cranking as well.

Not bad for a fitted sheet and some fabric scraps, huh?

It’s all in the details:

peek-a-boo cut-outs

or sweet appliqué with a simple border.

And how fun would it be to dress up this skirt for Christmas?

Mitten appliqués? Little trees with button ornaments? Ric Rak candy canes? Reindeer?

Or for Valentine’s Day? Or any day?

How much fun could you have with an old fitted sheet?

Thrilled to be featured on:

Linking up to:

Skip To My Lou, Craft-O-Maniac, C.R.A.F.T. * Stories of AtoZ, Tip Junkie, Sugar Bee, Today’s Creative Blog, Sassy Sites, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia * Someday Crafts, Lil Luna, We Are That Family, Blue Cricket Designs, The Thrifty Home, * House of Hepworths, *Tidy Mom, Whipperberry, Kojo Designs, Chic On A Shoestring, Momma’s Kinda Crafty, *Tatertots & Jello, Be Different Act Normal, Funky Junk Interiors * I Heart Naptime, Under The Table and Dreaming

In Cardboard

BLESSED Thanksgiving Part 1: Being Grateful with Creatively Content

4 Mins Read

Thank you so much for all the love you showed my good friend Brandi. Reading how much she’s touched each of you made me float.

***

As I sit here tonight, Thanksgiving is two weeks away.

Tonight I’m sharing the first of four holiday posts as my family and friends are getting ready for Turkey Day: Being Grateful, Decorating Without Dollars, Dressed for the Occasion and Stuffed! (all about the food!).

This year in particular I’m making a deliberate decision to reclaim Thanksgiving as a holiday in it’s own right and not just the first day of Christmas. I want to linger on thankful, relish in blessings and openly rejoice for everything I have instead of what I think I need. When I’ve taken this approach in year’s past, I find I’m much less likely to be depressed by what we’re not spending on Christmas and recognize how rich and full my life is right now.

So to celebrate today’s theme of Being Grateful, I’m so excited to have another bloggy friend, Becky from Creatively Content, here from half way around the world to share a beautiful Thanksgiving tradition she enjoys with her family. She writes that her theme for this season of her life is to ‘use what we have’, and I can tell you that her blog is a beautiful testament to just that.

Becky is an American blog momma living with her husband and three beautiful children in western Turkey near the Greek border. I’m always inspired by Becky’s faith, grace and creativity as she builds a wonderfully unique life for her kids. I hope you’ll love the Thanksgiving Mailbox that she’s sharing today as much as I do.

*************************************************************************************

Hi everyone at THRIVE! I’m Becky from Creatively Content.

The Thanksgiving Mailbox started because my girlies and me were sitting around making envelopes out of an old magazine and they played mail for a LONG time, sending sweet love notes to everyone in the family.

So I thought it would be fun to have a Thanksgiving mailbox where we wrote notes every morning starting 2 weeks before thanksgiving of things we are grateful for and put them in our mailbox. We used heavy duty cardboard for the bottom and the sides and a cereal box to shape the middle and back.

The stand came together using cardboard circles and toilet paper tubes.

And everything was held together using hot glue.

The kids tackled the decorating with strips of magazine pages + mod podge since my scrapbook paper supply is small and precious.

The envelopes are stored on the back of the mailbox in a little pouch with 5 little cards for each of us in the family to write what we are thankful for.

One special thing I added was that 5 envelopes have each of our families initials on it and so each of us will write (some with help) 😉 one thing we are grateful for about that person.

On Thanksgiving day we will open up all the 14 envelopes and remember what we were grateful for and each have our own envelope to open and see all the special things our family has to be grateful for about us. (The kids will love to get their own mail! We have one for Jesus, too.

Thanks Nike for including me in your Thanksgiving posts and hope you come and stop by Creatively Content.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

**********************************************************

You’re so welcome, Becky! I’m making one of your mailboxes for Family Home Evening with my Dirty Half Dozen.

I’ll hope you’ll stop by and say hi to Becky this week. Her corner of the world is literally thousands of miles from craft stores or fabric shops, yet she always finds amazing ways to use what she has and make do with what she doesn’t. Her blog is full of projects that celebrate the spirit of recognizing and being thankful for everything we do have in our lives.

Case in point:

No theatres to watch movies? Or too expensive to hit the theatre? No problem.

Becky just whipped up the coolest invite-the-neighborhood-over-and-watch-Toy-Story-2-kids-theatre.

No cool race car floor mat? No problem.

Becky made one on the floor using masking tape. Genius.

No sewing machine? No problem.

Becky just whipped up this adorable tiered skirt for her daughter without one. Seriously.

Thanks again Becky for sharing your Thanksgiving Mailbox with us!

******************************************************

And to all you out there in blogland…

… tell me …

what are you GRATEFUL for right now as you get ready for THANKGIVING?

(Can’t wait to show you part 2 of the THRIVE Thanksgiving series on holiday outfits. Like I mentioned at the end of Brandi’s post, this has been the happiest little accident ever.)

Share this:

In Choose To Thrive

Holiday THRIVE: Brandi from Don’t Disturb This Groove

2 Mins Read

Hey there Thrive readers!! I’m Brandi and I blog over at Don’t Disturb This Groove.

I write about handmade projects, makeovers and a recipe here and there.

I like finding creative ways to incorporate natural elements into my home. Which is why I love Nike’s, “Rock-What-Ya-Got” approach to living and crafting.

Growing in my yard is a Sweet Gum tree. Sweet Gum trees produce these prickly little balls (“Sweet Gum fruit”). Those prickly little balls are everywhere in my yard! This week instead of raking them into a pile, I went outside and gathered a bag full to create a wreath.

To construct my wreath, I started with a simple wreath form purchased for a dollar.

Then using my glue gun, I attached the prickly fruit to the wreath form starting from the inside and working my way out.

Once completed, I attached a saw tooth hanger to the backside, again using my glue gun.

Here it is my friends!

I love the texture of the wreath.

I kept things simple to focus on the natural beauty of the Sweet Gum fruit.

“Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you”. – Frank Lloyd Wright

I hope you enjoyed my tutorial! Happy Holidays everyone! Thanks so much Nike for having me over!!

************************

You’re so welcome, Brandi! I ADORE how you used natural items from your yard to create this beautiful wreath for the holidays. I’m so pinning this!

Many of you probably know Brandi from around blog land – she’s the wonderfully thoughtful blog visitor leaving heartfelt, genuine comments on some many projects out there. I am constantly encouraged by Brandi’s feedback here on THRIVE and am so not surprised when I see her doing the same for women crafters. And if you haven’t read about her inspiration for her blog title, you need to.

Oh, and did I mention Brandi’s mad crafting skills? No? Seriously … mad.crafting.skills.

Did you see this awesome Pottery Barn Knock off a few days ago?

It’s a Brandi.

Or these gorgeous holiday wreaths from corn husks and bay leafs?

Also Brandi’s.

This chair make-over is one of my favorite projects of Brandi’s ever.

And recipes … oh good heavens. This woman regularly screws up my daily WW points totals. 🙂 She makes evil, terrible, awful things like homemade eggnog … and Good-As-The-Mall Pretzels … and Banana French Toast.

I hope you’ll stop by Don’t Disturb This Groove and say hi to Brandi!

Be back soon to show you a happy little accident … (hehehehe)

In Decor

Thanksgiving Subway Art and Free Printables

4 Mins Read

Where were we?

Oh that’s right … the naked wall under my Chevron wreath.

My favorite, favorite quote/phrase/scripture for Thanksgiving is the 100 Psalm and I knew I wanted to have that displayed somewhere in my home. The words are so beautiful:

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.

Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.

Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;

we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise:

be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

I thought about making a plaque with wording, but decided to apply the vinyl right to the wall since it won’t damage the paint and can easily be changed for Christmas. I planned on using all white vinyl, but my awesome neighbor had this beautiful copper/bronzy vinyl that she hooked me up with that I am smitten with.

Here’s how it turned out:

I love how the colors work together with the Chevron Wreath and the way the copper vinyl glows as the sun streams into the room.

(Love the still unfinished trim work in the living room, eh?)

Have you ever tried using two shades of vinyl on your projects?

I hadn’t.

I cut the whole scripture in white vinyl first and then removed the letters I wanted to display in copper.

The I recut a few of the words from the copper scrap …

… and carefully applied them to the wall.

And just like that, one of my favorite scriptures came to life on my wall.

And as I sit here typing this, I can’t help smile at my view:

Now I realize that a lot of you don’t have Silhouettes so having a bunch of these projects can get frustrating. So … to make this project assessable to everyone and keep a Rock What Ya Got vibe, I’ve created several versions of this scripture in different formats so you can pick the one that works for you.

Option A: FREE COPIES

(yeah FREE!)

Silhouette users: email me at choosetothriveblog at gmail dot com and I’ll send you the file to cut your own. This should save you a couple hours of formatting and/or paying for a designs for the Silhouette store. A little tip here: weed slowly.

Non-Silhouette users: below are printable 8”x10” and 5”x7” versions that you can easily print out and pop into a frame you already have for a similar look.

8” x 10” Printable: Download HERE

5”x7” version: download HERE

Option B: Order Choices – SOLD OUT

1) If you need vinyl, my neighbor has kits for enough white and copper vinyl for this 12”x24” design for dirt cheap: $5. That way you don’t have to order a full role for a color like copper that you may only want a little piece of.

2) If you’d like to purchase a ready-made 12” x 24” version, I will cut a small number of these for $15 since they take quite awhile to feed and prep for application on a wall or board.

Again, email me if you’re interested.

So there you go …

lots of options for a beautiful reminder of this season of thanksgiving.

Linking up to:

Skip To My Lou, Craft-O-Maniac, C.R.A.F.T. * Stories of AtoZ, Tip Junkie, Sugar Bee, Today’s Creative Blog, Sassy Sites, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia * Someday Crafts, Lil Luna, We Are That Family, Blue Cricket Designs, The Thrifty Home, * House of Hepworths, *Tidy Mom, Whipperberry, Kojo Designs, Chic On A Shoestring, Momma’s Kinda Crafty, *Tatertots & Jello, Be Different Act Normal, Funky Junk Interiors * I Heart Naptime, Under The Table and Dreaming

In Food

Turkey Cookies

2 Mins Read

Just in time for Thanksgiving, these quick, easy and very kid-friendly treats are almost as fun to make as they are to eat. And the best part is that most of us have this stuff lying around from Halloween so maybe even free (or at least cheap!)

Great pared with place cards or as a dessert on your holiday table, try whipping up a batch of these gobblers as part of your Thanksgiving menu.

For each turkey you’ll need:

Cut the bottom off one of your cookies as straight and level as possible. Then pop the small left-over piece in your mouth quickly before anyone notices that it’s gone.

Melt chocolate chips for 30-60 seconds, just until they’re smooth and easy to spread.

Coat the trimmed cookie with chocolate using the back of a spoon …

… add the candy corn …

… and set aside to dry for a few minutes.

Dip the Kiss (wrapped or unwrapped) in chocolate …

… and place on the edge of the whole cookie. Let both pieces set for a minute or two before assembling.

To attach the turkey feathers, coat the cut edge of the cookie with chocolate …

… and place it directly behind the kiss. “Glue”on mini M&M’s for the head and waddle using more of the melted chocolate.

Voila!

Ridiculously cute turkeys just begging to get bit.

And the best part is that you can make these little guys as simple or fancy as you’d like:

These turkeys have been a Thanksgiving staple in my family courtesy of my awesome Aunt Claudia. And this is a great project for little fingers while the grown-ups are getting last-minute dinner stuff ready. Just be prepared—there’ll probably be a lot of licked fingers so you may want each kid to make their own. 😉

Hope you enjoy making—and eating—these fun Turkey Treats …

Every … last … bite!

*********************************************

Thank You to the awesome blogs that featured this project: