Grateful Notes – A Simple Family Thanksgiving Tradition

MEANINGFUL THANKSGIVING TRADITION FOR FAMILIES

If you’re following me on Instagram stories or my blog for a while, you probably already know that gratefulness is one of the values that means a lot to me. It is one of the core values of my photography business; and it is also the reason why I hosted a Halloween Micro Session For A Cause last month. So, of course around Thanksgiving a few years ago, I decided to start a simple Thanksgiving tradition with my family to instill gratefulness in my kids. It’s very simple that you can also do it!

WHAT YOU NEED

• Pieces of paper
• A marker or a pen
• A jar or a box

HOW TO DO IT

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The idea is to write what you are grateful for, every single night before going to bed, on a piece of paper. Fold it and it put it in your jar or box. The things you write don’t need to be something big, they can be something small, like a warm hug, or a family movie night. It’s also important that you do it at night so you can reflect back on your day. Very simple, right?

I’m not going to take credit for this amazing idea and tell you, I was the one who thought of it! I saw this idea on Pinterest when I was searching for family Thanksgiving tradition ideas and I really loved it! But I tweaked it a little.

When we did it for the first time, we wrote what we are thankful for on a pumpkin, every single night. However, this year, I totally dropped the ball and forgot to buy a huge pumpkin to write on last month. When I finally remembered it, all the huge pumpkins are not being sold anymore.

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So I thought of an alternative, which is the grateful notes! I got this cute trunk-looking box from Amazon. But you can absolutely get a simple mason jar or plain box. If you want to make it really special, you can even get a customized box.

I thought it’s going to work so much better than the pumpkins because the pumpkins we’ve written on the past years, we just threw them after I took pictures of what we wrote. But these grateful notes are something we can keep. And what’s even better, we can open up our “grateful box” anytime we want to & look at the things we’ve wrote in the past years, and we’ll instantly be reminded of how blessed we truly are.

WHY I LOVE THIS FAMILY THANKSGIVING TRADITION

I really love this family Thanksgiving tradition because it helps me my kids what being thankful is all about. I love to hear what they are grateful for at the end of the day. Most days they’re thankful for what kids normally are thankful for like a play date, or a fun day somewhere. But some days they surprise me, because they are grateful for the dinner that Daddy made, or because they got to help me sort the laundry.

Recently, I had to go through a bad couple of days and the kids knew about it, and even though I wasn’t in the mood to do our Thanksgiving tradition, I made sure we still did. I thought it’s going to be a great reminder for everyone and a great lesson to teach the kids, that no matter how bad your gets, there is still something to be thankful for.

If you do decide to do it, I’d love to hear what you think about this simple Thanksgiving tradition for families.

‘Til next time,

Belle