While folks around the country are battling crowds on this Black Friday, I’m snuggled in my toasty warm home on my comfy couch.  Reading a bit.  Snoozing a bit.  Eating left over pie — lots of it!  Just the way I think the day after Thanksgiving should be spent.  (See me shudder in horror at the thought of shopping this week-end!)

When my kids were young, they loved the I Spy books. (I loved them, too!)  Imagine my delight when I saw Brassy Apple’s idea of creating my own I Spy book,  I was immediately hooked on the idea.  Be sure to check out their site for their easy directions.

This is so easy there is absolutely no reason on earth not to make one.  (That sentence has a double negative.  Is it confusing?  Basically, what I meant was that it would be a crying shame if you didn’t make one because they are so easy to make.)

All you need to do is take pictures of lots of items (I’ll lend you my junk drawer if you would like).  Then, print the pictures and put them in a photo album.

Write a list of things to find in the photo.  Brassy Apple was so clever and wrote the list in poem form.  However, for those grandmas who are poetically challenged, you don’t have to write a poem.  A simple list is sufficient.

This would be an easy Christmas present that you could make for your grandchildren.  See if you can personalize it by including items in the photographs that your grandchildren could easily identify with you (a picture of you and/or grandpa, a picture of your pet, a special toy that they play with when they visit you, a book they love you to read to them at bedtime).

Regardless of the rhyming scheme in your book (or lack thereof), I’m sure your grandchildren would love getting their own I Spy book from grandma — especially if they get to sit in grandma’s lap and read it with her.

Last week, I wrote about making edible Pilgrim hats out of fudge striped shortbread cookies and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  My site stats show that lots of people are googling about these hats.  I’m happy that you folks like my idea.

At that time, I had plenty of cookies on hand to make hats to put by all of the plates of my Thanksgiving dinner guests.  But, somehow in the days that followed, the cookies disappeared one by one.  (Okay, Grandpa, fess up!  How many did YOU eat?  I only ate one.  Or two.  Or was it twelve?)

When I went to the store last Saturday to get more cookies, the shelf was bare.  I went back to the store last night.  Still no cookies.  What!  Are all of my readers shopping at my local grocery store buying out all of those cookies so I won’t have any for my own Pilgrim hats???  Luckily, I found some at the new grocery store in town.  Thank goodness!

If you are still looking for activities that you can do with your grandchildren on Thanksgiving and if you are new to this site, I thought that I would share some of the previous games I have written about:

• Candy Bar Game
• Candy Bar Game variation
• Zilch
• Panic card game
• Rhythm Cup game
• Matthew Mark Luke John

Lisa, over at Grandma Brief’s, writes about having a puzzle set out at Thanksgiving time with the goal to have it completed by Christmas.  I love that idea!  In the past, our family would have a puzzle up during the Christmas holidays.  So, doing one on Thanksgiving is a novel idea for me.  I think that this would be a great alternative for those dinner guests who don’t want to play Rock Band with me . . .

Hope you have a bond building, belly busting, soul satisfying wonderful Thanksgiving!

I hope I don’t make any enemies when I say this but I don’t like genealogy.  I do not care for searching and digging in dusty newspapers, mildewy microfiche, or crusty courthouse records for birth dates, marriage licenses, or death certificates.  Dates, dates, dates — B-O-R-I-N-G.

But the funny thing is that the random guy on the street or the stranger in the line at the grocery store seems to feel compelled to tell me their genealogy back to Adam.  What, do I have a sign on my back that says ‘Tell me your genealogy.  Every detail of it.’

However, the stories and the pictures are a horse of a different color.  Stories are more interesting than dates.  At least to me.  And, what a better time to share family stories than as your family gathers for Thanksgiving.

The Family Tree Kids! site has the goal of making family history fun.  (Good luck.)  One activity on their site explains how to make magnets of old family photos.  I really like this idea. Their directions on how to make these magnets is simple enough that I think my craft-challenged hands wouldn’t bungle this project too much.  Here is another site that gives good step by step instructions and plenty of ideas for pretty magnets.  The site Not Martha also has some really cute magnets.  (I like the mini tropical vacation one and the opaque Christmas ones — and I really identify with the title of her site because I am SO not Martha.)

Your grandchildren might enjoy hearing the stories of their ancestors as they make picture magnets of those folks.  I can’t think of a better way to have some fun while sharing family history.  But then I’m fun-challenged when it’s connected to genealogy.

You might want to contact some of your family members prior to Thanksgiving and ask them to bring copies of old photos that they could donate to the magnet-making project.  Or, maybe bring photos of current family members.  But better hurry.  Thanksgiving is just two days away.

In case you have cynical non-genealogist grandchildren (that are like me), they could use pictures of their friends to make a flock of magnets. Or use pictures from magazines, scrapbook paper, or possibly draw mini-portraits of friends or family to use.

My niece has these cute magnets on her fridge.  The top three are of her, her husband, and their son.  I think they are a hoot.

Maybe your grandchildren would want to bring their own school picture to use and give the magnet to you for your fridge.  Or they could take a picture of their pet before they come on Thanksgiving and use that picture for the magnet.

Maybe you could have a digital camera available for grandchildren to take candid photos of those family members who came to the Thanksgiving dinner.

If all else fails, maybe they could find pictures from places like fotopedia.com or picsearch.com.

This is an activity that is easy to prepare for and easy to do.  If you have an overly-stuffed-stomach after eating a scrumptious Thanksgiving meal, you can make a few magnets and then find a quiet place for a snooze..

Do you have some older grandchildren that you are wondering how you can entertain them on Thanksgiving Day? You might want to consider printing up some of these Thanksgiving paper crafts for them to make.

Christopher Bonnette has 2 turkey and 2 Pilgrim/Native American Indian paper crafts on his Macula website.  (When you log on, click on Downloads in his navigation on the left-hand side and then on Paper Craft.  Scroll across the gallery on the top of the page to find the Thanksgiving crafts.)

When you click on an image in the gallery, it brings up the pattern and instructions in the main part of your browser window.

Making these paper crafts takes skill with scissors and finger dexterity to fold and glue the paper so I don’t think that little grandchildren would be able to make them — unless they had lots of help from grandma.  However, I think the older ones could easily make these.  I plan on printing up a slew of them for after dinner activities.

You might want to bookmark this site because he also has a cute leprechaun, Easter bunny, Frankenstein, Santa, Christmas elves, and pirate.