Like many families, Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday.  It is the one time of year my entire family comes together from California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New York, and sometimes Florida J, and spends 3 full days together under one roof at our home in Massachusetts.  As the family grows, I relish the challenge of figuring out sleeping arrangements to maximize privacy and comfort, while also reserving enough space for those of us who thrive on staying up until the wee hours of the morning talking, playing games, and watching movies.

As you can imagine, we will not be celebrating in typical fashion this year.  Although we can’t celebrate the way we would like, the Menu4Living Ladies have come up with ways to still make the celebration special.  Key to us is keeping it personal, so we’ve come up with a number of ideas that can be adapted to anyone’s situation or budget.

The 2020 Virtual Thanksgiving Booklet

Featuring pictures of Thanksgiving celebrations from previous years, the traditional menu, key recipes, and instructions for favorite games.  Think about how you celebrate your holiday and which things you most look forward to.

You can assemble this on your own or ask everyone to contribute to it.  You can send all of the information digitally – even just in an e-mail, or you can create a photo book.  Shutterfly has an “instant mini-book,’ we are using for ours. 

For mine, while I wanted to surprise her, I decided my mother would be a fabulous teammate to pull this together on short notice – and I was so right to include her.  She has been sending me content non-stop.  In fact, we probably have too much at this point.  So, we will likely use the mini-book for the pictures, menu, and key recipes, but will be sending card game instructions, for example, via e-mail.  We also have Thanksgiving trivia and some other cute games for the younger kids, which we will probably send via e-mail.

Thoughtful Gifts

We will be mailing out the Thanksgiving Booklet, though e-mailing a digital version is probably the easier way to go for most.  Because puzzles and card games are such an important part of our celebration, we are also having decks of cards and custom puzzles sent to each household.  Numerous online sites allow you to customize playing cards and puzzles.  We opted for Zazzle for the playing cards and sent the same ones to everyone with our family name and “Virtual Thanksgiving 2020” printed on them.  For the puzzles, we are using Shutterfly to create several different puzzle versions appropriate for different ages, all with pictures from previous Thanksgivings.

Another approach, is to send some homemade items to your loved ones.  We are thinking small packages with jars of homemade cranberry sauce, pumpkin loaf, and caramel stirrers for loved ones near and far.  Other options include coffee, tea, jam, or cookies.  You can include a personal note on Thanksgiving themed notecards to make these packages extra nice.  Or, you can use any number of online options to have yummy baking mixes or actual baked goods sent to your loved ones.

Thankful For…

Our main Thanksgiving tradition is everyone writes down what they are thankful for and puts the paper in a bowl.  Either before dinner, or in recent years, before dessert, each person at the table grabs a paper and reads it aloud.  Everyone else at the table guesses who wrote it.  There are some truly beautiful words of gratitude each year.  And, lots of fun guessing who wrote what. 

I’ve been saving these for the past several years, so part of our booklet will include some of the words of gratitude from previous years.  Also, to preserve this tradition, we are planning to create a google form for everyone to submit their “I’m thankful fors” this year.  We will then e-mail them out for people to read aloud during our Thanksgiving Day Zoom.

Thanksgiving Day Zoom

We are planning to eat as our household, but then convene the whole extended group for a Thanksgiving Day Zoom!  During the zoom, we will read what we are thankful for and guess who wrote what.  We will also do a few rounds of the Dictionary game, which is a fan favorite.  (We are including directions for the game in the Thanksgiving Day Booklet and reminding people of the materials they will need to play during the zoom.)

Another fun option would be to zoom with family members as you all prepare a specific item on the menu, such as pumpkin pie.  We may do this with a smaller group, but as of now, we are not planning to have 7 households doing a baking zoom for Thanksgiving, though I’m sure it would be hilarious.

We wanted to get these ideas posted to help others who are looking for creative ways to celebrate.  Check back here next week, when we should have some examples of our final products. 

What are you doing to keep Thanksgiving special this year?  Please share in the comments below.