Thanksgiving Feast!

Our church holds a Thanksgiving dinner every year for the members and their families. This year, the lady who usually organizes it no longer attends the church and so they asked me if I would head it up. The first two times (yes, twice) they asked me, I turned them down. One, because we have only been attending this church for 10 months and therefore, I had never seen how it was done. Actually, I had never even been inside the church kitchen before! Well, the third time I was asked, it was by the Senior Pastor. He asked me to pray about it and get back to him two days later, on Sunday. I prayed and felt that this was something pretty important to the church and I was actually getting excited about it. Scared, but excited. So on Sunday, I told my pastor I would head it up if we could get a team of 5 people to help set up, cook and tear down. He presented it to the church congregation that morning and I had over 20 volunteers! Yes, it is good to listen to God!!!

Now, I only had 7 days to plan this feast for 150 to 200 people. Yikes! I had a meeting with everyone who volunteered after church and was able to get 6 people to cook turkeys at home and then bring them in already carved. I had several others scheduled to come in on Saturday to set up the room and several ladies to come in early on Sunday to help me in the kitchen. During the week, the kids and I shopped at 6 different stores to get the best deals, as I was working under a very tight budget.

It turned out that we had 152 people show up to eat and God really did wonders in that room that night. I am so glad I listened to Him, as many were blessed because of it.

One of the good things about me having never been apart of the Thanksgiving feast, was that I had free reign to do what I wanted with it. In the past, it had always been catered and served buffet style. Well, I decided to have us all eat family style. This way we could all eat together at the same time and pretty much finish eating together. Eating family style also meant that there had to be more communication among everyone at the table in order to pass the food around. Also, being a mommy to 3 small ones, I know how bored kids can get at these things. So instead of using cloth table linens, I decided to use craft paper. This way the parents didn't have to worry about the kids messing up the linens and the kids could color right on the paper after they had finished eating. Win, win! Now on to the pictures!

Now, remember I only had 7 days to plan this and I was on a very limited budget. I also wanted to keep it kid friendly. Here is a picture of part of the room. We had six rows that held aprox. 3o people.
I decided to make these thankful trees. I bought the vases at Dollar Tree and lined each one with a sheet of moss. Then I cut some branches off of a tree and had our youth trace/cut out their hands and then wright something they were thankful for. The tag around the vase says *Give Thanks*.

Because we were using craft paper for table cloths, I thought it would be cute to draw on placemats and use bright colored plates/cups/napkins. This was actually a bigger hit than I could have realized and so easy.

To keep with the Thanksgiving theme, I and the youth group made these pilgrim hats and filled them with crayons. The kids LOVED them!

We used these partitions to hide anything we would not be using that night, but of course they are also kind of plain. Any easy fix, print out these letters (GIVE THANKS) I found on the Internet, hang them on a ribbon and adorn with leaf cut outs we had on hand from our October bulletin board.

I also found the next three print outs online, put them in picture frames (from my house) and added them to each table.

There were two of these. One in cranberry and the other in green.

This fun one, another that said Keep Calm and Cranberry On and a third in brown that said Gather Here with Thankful Hearts.

And lastly this one.

Afterwards; Waynes band, Southland, played in the sanctuary. It was a fantastic night and I have heard nothing but compliments and how everyone can't wait for next year. Oy Vey! lol

Thanksgiving 2010

Hope you all had a happy and blessed Thanksgiving. We spent our Thanksgiving with Wayne's brother and family. This was the only picture we were able to get. Enjoy!