Thanksgiving Gratitude Project

Counting Down to Thanksgiving by Counting our Blessings

Happy Thanksgiving! Here in Hong Kong, we don’t have a long holiday weekend filled with a huge turkey, American football games or the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade, but that doesn’t mean we don’t celebrate.

The last few years have been difficult no doubt, but with things improving in Hong Kong, I’ve been wanting to turn our thoughts in a more positive direction. The Thanksgiving holiday give me a great excuse for a little family gratitude project.

In our dining room we have large, frosted glass windows that let in the most wonderful natural light. We use that space to decorate for holidays and pay homage to the most recent masterpieces from school. The Lunar New Year lanterns had been up for an embarrassingly long time, sun-bleached and spattered by stray droplets from typhoons. It was time to bid them adieu and create something a little more autumnal in vibe.

The last week in October was the half-term school break and we got another typhoon. The wet, windy weather meant a few days hanging out at home and a good opportunity for some crafting with the guys. For our Thanksgiving decorations, we decided to make paper leaves. We rounded up all the red, orange, yellow and green colored paper in the house and set to work.

"Over the breakfast table each morning, we each come up with one thing that we’re grateful for. I write them all down on those little rectangles and tape them up on the window."

I found a great little tutorial online from Red Ted Art for easy paper leaves and the boys and I got going cutting, folding, and gluing. The tutorial called for a specific size, but we wanted to get the most out of every sheet of paper, so we improvised a bit and ended up making leaves of a lot of different sizes. When we were done we went to town arranging them artfully in the window.

With some of the leftover bits, we made rectangles to write our daily gratitude points. Over the breakfast table each morning, we each come up with something that we’re grateful for. I write them all down on those little rectangles and tape them up on the window.

It took a few days for the boys to get into the swing of thinking in this way. With thoughts of what they want for Christmas ever present, taking a minute to be appreciative of what they already have was a big mental shift. I'm happy to say that now they’re the ones driving this project, making sure we write down what we're feeling grateful for each day.

The best part is how often we pass by that window filled with our blessings. An excellent reminder of what big, beautiful lives we lead, for which I am so very grateful.