Post your thoughts -- they make great decorations

By Debbie Connelly

It was my year to host Thanksgiving and with the food preparation, decorating and so forth, I knew it would get crazy. I kept wondering how to get the kids involved until a thought crossed my mind at church. I would get fall-colored square sticky notes and seriously go to town...the kids and I would write down everything that we're thankful for and stick them all over the house. Presto, no decorating needed and a project that all four of my kids (with a little help from the older two writers) could do. It knew it would be fun, and a bit shocking, for our guests to see so many colored sticky notes all over our house. I planned to invite them to write some as well. No one could forget why we were all gathered and it would sure make a statement.

Well, the kids went hog wild with the project. In total, we had about 200 colored sticky notes all around the house. I paired Sydney and Brooke with each of the twins since they cannot spell very well. Sydney and Brooke would write down their thoughts and the thoughts of the twins. The twins would run all over the house hanging up the notes. It was really interesting watching them think up ideas. The notes consisted of being thankful for their teachers, bus drivers, Jesus, Sunday school teachers, friends, family, the dog, Jesus, angels, ice skating, cookies, trees, cereal, etc. The impact was incredible!

I think that they could have filled up more notes. The kids placed the sticky notes all over the walls, ceiling, bathroom mirror, toilet(!), fireplace, doors, windows, etc. The reaction of our thanksgiving crowd was great. Most took time to read the notes and the kids pointed out their favorites. I overheard a comment from Sydney saying, "Wow, I didn't realize we had so much to be thankful for."

How grateful are we? Here was a simple, tangible project to count the ways.

(ed. note: I LOVE this idea so much! What a great way to get the kids on board. Anyone see this working as an advent calendar? Countdown to Christmas day with red and green stickies the kids can write on? Maybe write down "gifts we can give that aren't wrapped presents" or "gifts Jesus has given us?" or like my mother-in-law used to do to line Jesus' manger, a list of good deeds done in the season????)