SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) have to be very cautious when any big holiday comes around and Thanksgiving is no exception. The excitement accompanied by our amazing creative abilities can send us to places that make great material for sitcoms. If you don’t want to slip over the holiday edge this year, the following DON’Ts will help you think twice before you make any festive moves.
- Don’t tell your family you’ll cook the whole dinner. BOPs (Born Organized People) plan their menus and give out food assignments to friends and family who’ll be attending the feast. SHEs tend to want to take on the whole meal singlehandedly and most suffer HBO (Holiday Blow Out) and there’s still Christmas just around the corner.
- Don’t decorate beyond your ability to un-decorate. Think ‘What goes up must come down.’ The color scheme for Thanksgiving usually consists of oranges, yellows and browns and each of those colors clashes with the red and green of Christmas.
- Don’t forget about getting the kids involved with the feast. Our tendency is to want them out of our hair, but the more involved they are the better they’ll be prepared for holiday events when they grow up.
- Don’t go within 100 yards of a craft or fabric store until after Thanksgiving. Those stores will be half-pricing all the turkeys, pilgrims and cornucopias as well as the fabric representing the Thanksgiving Day theme. You’ll be tempted to think you’ll have time to pull off a beautiful table cloth and matching napkins, or maybe even costumes for a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. You won’t have time!
- Don’t get stuck with all the leftovers. Plan ahead and go to a Dollar Store and purchase food containers for each guest. You know you can put on weight from easy access to leftovers and most of us already have a “winter cushion.”
- Don’t carve the turkey at the dining room table in an attempt to recreate the scene from the Norman Rockwell painting. You can actually roast the turkey the day before and get it carved in the kitchen where it makes a big mess on your counters not on the tablecloth.
- Don’t worry about serving your turkey while it’s hot! It can even be cold as long as the potatoes, gravy and stuffing are piping hot.
- Don’t leave table conversation up to the adults. Get the kids to write ideas for conversations, put them in a hat and let the adults draw a topic. It’s a lot of fun and you’ll be surprised how much the children will chip in with their thoughts.
- Don’t forget to enjoy this holiday for what it is. We are thankful not only for being able to live in this amazing country, but we are thankful for life itself. What a blessing this gift of life is to each of us and how blessed we are to have such an abundance of food, friends and family.
- Don’t clean up by yourself. Be a good delegator and get the men to help if they don’t volunteer. When you’re organized you can put aside tasks for them while there are time outs in whatever game they’re watching.
Thanksgiving should be fun. You have the power as the woman in the family to set the tone for that fun. If you’re all stressed and disorganized, you won’t be able to set that festive tone. Take care of yourself first, delegate and enjoy!