Thanks

It's Thanksgiving and the time of year we all should be thinking about what we are thankful for in our lives.  But, how do we teach our children that we are truly blessed in our lives.  Some parents chose to model generosity by volunteering or donating to homeless shelters/food banks, we just don't have the means this year to do that.  Plus, it is really hard to get all three kids on board with a trip like that to town.  My husband and I look forward to one day being able to give back more to our community and to others that we don't know at all.  That is why we have started a money/budget journey.  Part of the journey for us is being open and upfront about our financial status with not only our family but with our friends too.  For example when a friend says, "Let's get a babysitter and meet in town for dinner and drinks."  We say, "We don't really have the money for a night out like that right now, but how about we get together and cook dinner and let the kids play together."  To which, most of our friends would respond, "Yeah, we don't have the money either, cooking dinner sounds fun!"  Another part of the journey is switching to a cash system, I actually froze my credit cards!

(and yes, the credit card ice block is sitting on homemade baby food)

It has taken a little adjustment but my husband and I are very excited about this journey and hope to be debt free soon and have more 'spare' money to give away and donate.  The next project I plan on doing to make the switch to a cash system is to make my wallet pretty (and I will make a manly one too)...

I will post a picture of the finished project of 'Pretty Envelopes for your cash.' when I am done.

And don't forget to be thankful every for things in your life not only today, but everyday.

Now time for another quick Pinterest pass or fail (that is what I intended to write about today when I started).  This is a family project that I saw on Pinterest awhile back and I just saw the original picture and it inspired an idea, I never followed the link so I will not post the link here to see if the picture inspires any of you as it did for me. 

The Original photo from Pinterest

I saw this picture and thought, wow what a great idea and what a great thing to help teach Mason what being thankful means.  So, (almost) every night the entire month of November we sat down at the table to wrote on a leaf what we are thankful for then put is on the tree.  It has been really fun to see Mason (3 years old) start to understand what the meaning of thankful is.  And it had been really good for us parents sometimes to look back at something positive after a long stressful day and remember we are blessed in SO MANY ways.

We made our tree as a family and that was fun too.  First we took paper grocery bags and cut them apart so that they lay flat then crumpled them up!  Thats right just crunch them up like a piece of trash, this softens the paper fibers and gives the 'tree trunk' a little texture.  Then start taping together and drawing and cutting out your 'naked tree' (that is what Mason called it at this point).  We used blue painters tape to put the tree and all the leaves up on the wall so it won't damage the paint.  Our tree didn't have any leaves to start and now as we have put leaves up every night out tree is very full this Thanksgiving day.  I hope you all have a very full tree and a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Our tree trunk had to be shortened because the 8 month old babies were trying to tear it down.

Verdict:  Pinterest PASS (A+)