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Tips for Coping with Politics on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving can be stressful all by itself. Things can get even worse when a presidential election happens a few weeks before Thanksgiving day. Some of your relatives might want to talk about politics. Here are some tips for coping with political discussions on Thanksgiving. Make a conscious effort not to talk about the election at Thanksgiving dinner. Don’t ask your relatives who they voted for. Stay away from topics that were especially controversial during the election. Thanksgiving dinner is not the time to wear a political t-shirt, button, or hat that came from the campaign of the candidate you voted … Continue reading →

Ways to Make Thanksgiving Less Stressful for Kids With ASD

Thanksgiving is typically celebrated by spending time with family, and eating a big meal. This is a day that is going to completely throw off the schedule that your autistic child is used to. This can make things stressful for both the child, and his or her parents. Here are some tips to make coping with Thanksgiving a little bit easier on your child. Kids who have an autism spectrum disorder rely on there being a consistent schedule. When school is out due to a holiday, like Thanksgiving, this can cause your child to feel some stress. Suddenly, everything he … Continue reading →

Let the Madness Begin: Holiday Dinners Here, There and Everywhere

How do you decide which family you’ll spend holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas with? Some people are lucky and have their families all in the same city or state. Others, like Wayne and I, live in a different state than our families. Others have an even more complicated dilemma: her parents live in one state and his live in another. It gets tricky juggling where to go. Wayne and I are lucky, because even though we have to travel to go home for the holidays, at least everyone’s in Colorado somewhere. The majority of kin is in the Denver metro … Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Pies a Day Early – a Fun Tradition

We have two Thanksgiving traditions about pie. The first is that we make pies from scratch. Wednesday is the pie making day. Pie crust isn’t that hard, but it is a little time consuming. I make a big batch of crust and refrigerate it. As the day goes on, we almost always have one pie or another in the oven. Our standard pies are pumpkin and pecan. We usually do an apple or a cherry one too. And all those pies make the house smell wonderful. I can just pull out the dough and use it as I need it … Continue reading →

Everyone Helps With Thanksgiving Dinner

Yesterday my oldest son and I did our shopping for Thanksgiving. Some years the whole family goes and picks out things, but we didn’t have the time yesterday. The store was so crowded that I was glad everyone had not come with us. Before shopping, we did have a mini family meeting though about the menu. We don’t change it much from year to year, but we have all agreed that we need to spice it up a little. Our traditional Thanksgiving dinner is old southern family recipes. The dishes are delicious, heavy on the butter and pecans, but also … Continue reading →

Tips for more Functional Thanksgiving Entertaining

These tips will actually work for Thanksgiving or anytime. Whether you’re hosting a holiday meal or giving a dinner party they will help make things more functional when serving guests. While many people choose to serve a “family style,” Thanksgiving dinner, where platters and bowls of delicious food are passed around the table, some may find that the dining table soon becomes to full of good food to be very functional. Instead, you might consider setting up a buffet. A good way to do this and still keep the food the focus is to set a serving table or sideboard … Continue reading →

Week in Review – Family Fun

Join us in the upcoming week for crafts, ideas, and traditions for making your December brighter. Last week we covered traditions and family activities for Thanksgiving. The day and week after Thanksgiving are a great time to plan ahead for fun family activities for the next month. Read a few ideas in Planning for Holiday Fun. Fun Ways to Keep Children Occupied Today shares ideas for keeping children occupied the day before Thanksgiving. Most of the ideas can be used for any day when you are busy with holiday preparations and are great for days when you have company. Thanksgiving … Continue reading →

A Southern Christmas: Chocolate Pecan Pie

My husband was raised in Alabama. Or so he says. The truth is, he moved to New England in between 5th and 6th grade. But he still claims that toddlerhood through 5th grade were his formative years and therefore, he is a Southerner. Every once in awhile, you can still hear the southern accent in his voice and he has a taste for things like grits, which I disdain. Southerner or not, I have decided to feature some “southern” recipes during this holiday season in honor of him. So enjoy honey! This recipe has bourbon in it, but it is … Continue reading →

Coming Together Around the Parade

The other day I wrote about how my teenagers still love to peruse the toy catalogs that come in the mail and the newspaper during this time of year, as the sun comes out on this frosty Thanksgiving morning and starts to melt away all the frost and ice, my kids and I have flipped on the television to rally around the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This is one of those few bonding traditions that has somehow survived the years and changes and we can still manage to agree on the parade for a few hours on Thanksgiving Day. Traditions … Continue reading →