I'm Thankful Today Because.... Remember When?

Remember When you made things like this in elementary school?  The idea was to trace your hand and cut it from that construction paper that always smelled like wet cardboard...  Then you'd get a collection of sparkly, feathery embellishments to glue on -- even though most of mine would end up glued to ME!!  Sometimes the art teacher would have some bravado idea of of letting us dip our hands in paint before smearing our fingers all over that construction paper -- or in my case, my face and clothes!!  Regardless, those mangled turkey pictures always ended up in a proud display on the refrigerator until the paint chips would flake to the floor and my dad would find glitter in his mashed potatoes...  At which point I am sure my mom would tuck them away as a treasure forever...

Anyway...  I hopped across a new challenge blog this week by the name of Just Inspirational Challenges...  I haven't had much of a chance to check out many of their past challenges, but this week's was to create any shaped card...  And since I was *just inspired* to create one of these throwback turkey cards, I thought I'd enter it over there. :)  Initially, this is the idea I had for creating a card for the Cricut Cardz Challenge #48 as well (their challenge was to create a Thanksgiving Card using the 'Card Feature' from any cartridge -- I used the Card Feature on A Child's Year Cricut Cartridge to make the hand card -- The feathers are from Creative Memories Cheerful Seasons Cricut Cartridge -- The beak, snood, and eye were all hand-cut -- I should mention that my plan was to glitterize him, but The-Girl-Child had borrowed my bag of stickles for a school project and 'forgot' to return them...  Therefore, I was unable to make this boy turkey look completely girly :)...  Brown chalking inks finished off the edges of the fingers and feathers, and the lettering was done with a black fine tip marker).  Despite the simplicity of the card, it also inspired quite a lot of thinking on my behalf...  My rant begins below, so if you're interested in exploring a small sampling of my silliness, I invite you to continue...

For several weeks now, I've been thinking about November...  It's such an important month...  It's the kick-off for the holiday season,  it's the month when people really travel to reconnect with family and loved ones, and it hosts a day just for celebrating why we're thankful!!

In addition to all of these great things about November, there are a few not-so-great things that I sometimes think about...  It's the first month of the season that I'm really cold (and I don't particularly like being cold!), the sun makes fewer appearances (and this makes me sad!), and other equally distressing things that I honestly don't want to give much thought to!!

Because of this, I decided I really wanted to dedicate each day in November to remembering why I'm thankful...  I thought perhaps I could do a scrapbook page or something each day -- anything to remind me why I'm so incredibly blessed!!  I invite you to take this challenge with me!!  As I complete my pages, I'll upload some of them here, so please come back and follow along.  I may keep a few of them private, but my goal is to be Thankful Everyday in November!!  :)

So here's day one (on November 2nd -- hee hee -- I'll explore my reason for why I'm thankful I didn't get to post day one until day two shortly)...

I'm ridiculously thankful that I have such wonderful parents.  My parents are the reason I am so close to my own children.  They are the reason that I've embraced being a mother and held on to the fleeting moments spent with now-teenage kiddos.  I never remember hearing either of my parents say "Oh, I can't wait til our kids are grown and out of the house," but I do remember feeling like I was always welcome back, like their home would always be my home (even with that Freddy-Cat of theirs!).  And that is always how I want my kids to feel...  Like my home will always be their home too.  I don't look forward to both of them being off to college next year...  But, I'll always look forward to seeing what their futures have in store for them.

I would absolutely LOVE for you to leave a comment telling me what you're most thankful for today!!  :)  Also, please be sure to hop on over to the Just Inspirational Challenge #18 and Cricut Cardz Challenge #48 to see what everyone else created too!!  Thanks so much for stopping by!!  Please come again soon!!