Yikes!  Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Are you ready?  Are your pies baked?  House cleaned?  Silver polished? Decorations out?

If you are looking for last minute Thanksgiving ideas, I have just the thing for you. 

(That almost sounds like something you’d say at Christmas time instead of Thanksgiving . . .)


Four ideas:

• Simple, simple, and cute turkey finger puppets that you could stitch up in a whiz for grandchildren to play with while they are waiting to eat.
• Turkey centerpiece and place card
• A funny paperbag turkey to make for the kids table centerpiece (if you have a kids table, that is)
• Easy, peasy turkey centerpiece made out of a pumpkin and crayons

What are you still doing here?  Hurry, scurry!  Off you go.  Get ready to have a thankful day with family, friends, and loved ones.

Remember when you were in school and you would trace your hand and then use that as the body to draw a turkey?

Well, that activity is the basis for my idea for today.  Make sugar cookie turkeys out of a hand print.

Check with your local craft store to see if they have a hand-shaped cookie cutter.  If they don’t, get an empty cereal box, trace around your grandchild’s hand, and use that as a pattern for cutting out a hand shaped cookie.

After your cookies are baked, frost them with a chocolate brown frosting. Then, make several different colors of frosting and frost each finger a different color to make colorful ‘feathers.’

Or, you can use small, colorful candies or candy corn on your fingers. You could use strips of colorful licorice (if you can find it in the grocery store.) You could use M&Ms.  You could use cake decorator sprinkles. Whatever.

Then, use a chocolate chip for the eye.

Then snarf those turkey cookies down.

Don’t worry about how much of a mess you make. Or how many calories you consume. Remember, have joy in the journey (of making the cookies). The memories that your grandchildren will have while making their sugar cookie turkeys will be far more important than having a clean kitchen or not eating too many calories.

Enjoy!

Imagine: It’s Thanksgiving Day. People have started arriving. They are hungry. Milling around. You’re busy in the kitchen.

What can you have your grandchildren do that will help you out and keep them busy (and happy) until it’s time to eat?

Why–  have them make place cards! Here are links to some that you can print out ahead of time. Then when your grandchildren arrive, simply have them cut out the place cards, write family members’ names on the cards, and place the cards around the table. That’s doable, isn’t it?  That’s what I thought.

• HGTV has some rather elegant looking ones. (I think these are  my favorite.)
• Here’s a Pilgrim hat place card. (My second favorite.)
• Nice ones (the turkey is cute) and some that would have lots of kid appeal (using a teddy bear).

Using Thanksgiving style place cards adds to the theme of your table setting and decoration.  Makes your table look festive. And keeps grandchildren busy.

That’s a winning combination if you ask me . . .

If you have had your grandchildren make place cards for Thanksgiving, please post a comment and share your ideas!

My kids enjoyed playing twister when they were growing up. Sheesh, I enjoyed it, too.

Which got me thinking.

How could I turn Twister into a Thanksgiving Twister.

This is what I came up with.  I got a bunch of Thanksgiving clip art. I’m going to print some up and tape them over the colored square.  For example, I have a picture of a turkey, pumpkin, pilgrims, and Native American Indians (and a few other pictures).

I’ll print up enough turkeys for all of the green circles, enough pumpkins to go on the yellow ones, enough pilgrims to go on the red circles, and enough Native American Indians to go on the blue ones.

Then, when someone uses the spinner, it would be ‘left hand’ on the ‘turkey.’ Get the idea?

This is what I plan on doing this Thanksgiving.  Do you think my grandchildren that are 3 years old and younger will understand how to play it?  Or should I get their parents to play it???

In case you think this is a fabulous idea (you DO think it is fabulous, don’t you??), here is a PDF file of the pictures that I’m going to be using. Feel free to download it and using it for your Thanksgiving Twister, too.