Making Your Home a Haven: Cooking

Ya gotta love Courtney over at Women Living Well and her ideas for the Making Your Home a Haven fall challenge.  This is my second year participating and it's just so meaningful.  The first week was focusing on lighting a candle every day; last week we added quiet (and sometimes not-so-quiet) music; and this week, the third part of the challenge is cooking!

Courtney has a great post about cooking and, if you have kids, including them in food preparation.  Check it out!  It's the perfect week for this part of the challenge. :)

As for me, I'm going to link you to some of my family's favorite Thanksgiving recipes--easy and tasty!

Here's a cranberry-ish dish that even children love.  As a matter of fact, children probably love it more than the adults do, but most adults like it as well. ;)  Cranberry-Raspberry Salad

An alternative to pumpkin pie, this one has won over even kids who don't particularly like the pumpkin in pie.  Pumpkin Pie Cake

Here's a fancy, but easy, way to fix corn for any dinner.  Triple Corn Casserole

This one is a little Thanksgiving treat that you'll want the kids to help with!  Pilgrim Hat Cookies

Happy Cooking!  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! :)

The Thanksgiving Tree

I would love to meet Ann Voskamp.  Her influence on me this past year, through her book and ministry, has been such a huge blessing.  It was she who gave me the idea to start this Thanksgiving Tree this month to help my family focus on the many, many blessings for which we are grateful.  I had to share it with you because it's such a great idea, and it works!

Just go outside and gather a bunch of sticks, arrange them in a vase, then go here (takes a minute or two to load) and print and cut out the leaves.  Each leaf has a colorful side with a Bible gratitude verse and a blank side for you to write what you are thankful for.  We read the verse and our own written part together before hanging it on the "tree." 

I think it's meant to be one leaf per day, but I see no reason to limit it to that if we can think of more blessings in a day!  I just scattered the extra leaves around the bottom of the vase, and will print out more when needed.

The month is half over, but it's not too late to start this project for your home, whether your household contains you alone or lots of people or somewhere in the middle!  We all are blessed in so many ways, it's probably not too difficult to think of at least 2 blessings a day to "catch up" by the end of the month! :)