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I've joined in with some blogging friends for an online book club, and we are wrapping up this week. By the way, all our readers are invited to join in as well. Each month we'll have a theme to build our book picks around, and our December theme was Celebrations.
A few days before the theme was announced I had downloaded the Kindle edition of Everyday Confetti by Karen Ehman & Glynnis Whitwer. I'd actually been looking for another book by Ehman but it wasn't available through my library. This one was, and it looked interesting, and then it turned out to be quite suitable to the book club theme.
Everyday Confetti by Karen Ehman & Glynnis Whitwer - Beyond birthdays and Christmas, there are many occasions that call for celebration in our families. Some moms love planning elaborate birthday parties, but that's not everyone's style. For many families, smaller everyday celebrations offer more chances to make memories for kids, and may even become family traditions.
If you need ideas for the kinds of things you can celebrate, and how to mark achievements or special days on the calendar in affordable ways, this little guidebook has those ideas. In addition to some different ideas for birthdays and achievements, there are ideas for many other occasions throughout the calendar year. There are plenty of recipes included as well.
The book is organized into two parts. The first is Everyday Celebrations and focuses on ways to honour achievements like work or school milestones, or even character development achievements. These are also celebrations of birthdays, spiritual milestones, and special family occasions. Not all family members live close by, so suggestions for staying connected and for reaching out to others are part of this section as well.
In Part Two, Holidays through the Year, there are ideas for celebrating seasons and the special days that we might find on our calendars. There are fresh takes on the well-known holidays like Valentines Day, Memorial Day, and Thanksgiving; and some days that are just for fun like Backwards Day or Best Friends Day. The majority of the celebration ideas are activities that are geared towards families with younger children, but there are some suggestions to get teens involved. I did notice that although Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day are specifically mentioned and there are references to acknowledging 'our neighbors to the south', the authors did not even one time make reference to the neighbors to the north. Surely Canada Day or the Canadian date for Thanksgiving could have been highlighted as well, and since the authors are from Michigan (at least one is, if I remember correctly), I was surprised and rather disappointed at this omission.
Overall, if you have young children and would like ideas to celebrate everyday joys and make memories, this little guidebook has plenty to get you started and will inspire you to come up with new traditions and fun to bring your family together.
Our home can be a place of nurturing, a place where children grow up confident in their worth, a place where a husband feels respected and a friend feels loved, a place where God is honored.
Psalm 68:6 says, "God sets the lonely in families." Let him set some in yours this year.
What has been your favorite family tradition over the years and why? . . . Have the adults share their favorite memory of their holidays growing up. Did it have to do more with money or with people, with getting or with doing? Can you think of any new tradition you would like to start celebrating and why?
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Since my kids are all grown up and my only grandchild (so far!) doesn't live nearby, a lot in this book didn't apply to me in a way. But it was still very encouraging because I've tried to be intentional about finding delight in the everyday and marking all kinds of special occasions. The china should be used more often than just Easter and Thanksgiving! I especially appreciated ideas like writing personal notes or letters of encouragement to others on each of the forty days of Lent, or using the twelve days of Christmas to bless others who may be facing a particularly challenging holiday season.
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Visit Hopkins Homeschool to find out more about the online book club, and visit all the participating bloggers to see what they've read as part of this theme!
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2 comments:
This one sounds like I would be in about your position since my girls are all older but I can always use ideas about holidays so I may try to see if the library has this to browse through.
Oh, I want to read this book! Thank you for sharing it.
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