With Thanksgiving just days away, I’m sure many of us are in the mad dash to get the final preparations underway.  We host a large group of people, usually 25+ so being organized and prepared for the day helps ensure everything runs smoothly and everyone gets to enjoy our time together.

Today, I thought it would be fun to share a few of our family tips that help bring the day together.  Hopefully a few of these may help you or you just enjoy seeing how we spend our day.

I. Prep as much as possible the day before.  We usually love to have everyone over for the entire day which means there is little prep time the morning of.  We usually take the day before to finalize the table set-ups, decorations and general layout.  The day before prep team includes my mom, sister-in-law and their families and it has become one of our favorite traditions in addition to the day of.  They help transform my home in literally a matter of hours.

2. Share the meal prep.  While I love hosting, I do not subject my guests to my cooking.  Instead, I let my mom take over the turkey duties along with the stuffing and mashed potatoes since those are the things she loves the most.  From there, we divide up the rest of the meal and food for the day making it much easier rather than just a handful of people taking responsibility for all of the food.

3. Set up different areas for all of your guests so that everyone isn’t crowding into your kitchen and living room all at once.  We usually transform our garage into an additional living space, moving the furniture from the family room out there to make it more cozy and keeping all of the appetizers and drinks out there, away from the action in the kitchen.  This allows for a good flow of traffic in and out of the house without everyone on top of one another.

4. Make sure the kids have plenty of activities to keep them busy.  With a long day of hanging out and waiting for the meal, we try to make sure there are plenty of things for the kids to do.  From a ping pong table, trampoline, bikes and scooters, to video and board games and even some crafts, the key to no meltdowns is a variety of different things to keep them busy.  Making sure they are taking the time to hydrate and snack is also an important part of an incident free day.

5. Make the time to stop and enjoy the time with your family.  It is so easy to get caught up in obsessing about every detail and by the time the day ends, you realize you didn’t get a chance to really catch up with everyone or take some of the photos you wanted to capture.  One of the traditions we share is having each person talk about what they are grateful for.  It gives us a chance to stop and really listen to one another and appreciate where each of us is in our lives.

Hope all of you have a safe and blessed Thanksgiving holiday!