Weekend Things ~ Thanksgiving

We had a full house, for both Thanksgiving Day and houseguests for the weekend. It turns out Thanksgiving is not much of a picture-taking holiday (who looks back on their old Thanksgiving photo albums?), although I did take a few Instagrams of the food preparation process. 

But we did get out into the woods a bit, with one of our guests, where I took a few photos.

After an uncharacteristically sunny start to the month, the weather's gone full-on November, gray and damp, and it even snowed a bit today.

Amid all the holiday preparations, I found a little time for craftiness. I worked a bit on a quilt for Z (I had a moment of thinking I could get it done for Christmas, then realized that's crazy).

And I made a set of autumnal placemats in time for Thanksgiving breakfast (our traditional, and very unseasonal fruit-yogurt-granola parfaits). They're to go with our Thanksgiving table runner which, by the time this photo was taken, was in treatment for a full-glass-of-red-wine stain.

This material I bought several years ago at a discount store that has an amazing fabric selection. Something about the design reminds me of eastern European folk art, or maybe Gypsy caravans. It has a lot of motion and energy and I love it.

I added a little rickrack trim around the edges, to make it look like I put in a little more effort than just sewing to pieces of fabric together. It turns our rickrack is difficult to find around here—I had to go to two different stores to get what I thought was enough, and then took an emergency run to two other stores Wednesday morning when it turned out I had underestimated (and it turns out the best source of rickrack is a hardware store!!)

  

We each made another entry in our Gratitude Journal, for the ninth year in a row. Our kids have gotten so used to it by now they don't hardly even complain. It was good for me to sit down, at this very challenging time, and think about what is still good in the world and my life. I also had C read this blessing at our meal. I looked up "multicultural Thanksgiving blessing" online and this was the first to pop up. It says so much of how I feel right now, and how I wish more of my fellow humans felt. It was a good thing to say out loud, and I think it, too, will become a tradition (by the way, it looks a heckuva lot longer hand written in fancy pen, so if you plan to make your spouse read it out loud, I recommend printing it out, so you don't scare them and your guests).

Happy Thanksgiving, friends.