Our Blessing Jar (and other uses for Mason jars)

Jen over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam wrote a post on fabulous ideas for mason jars. I thought I'd chime in with my favorite way we use one at our house. 

It's our Blessing Jar, a tradition that goes back to 1999. At that time we just had two children and couldn't possibly have even imagined the changes the next few years would bring, with both joys and trials. 

Our favorite family tradition occurs on Thanksgiving Day. We have lunch at our house for our family (our kids, my niece and family and our friend Barbara.) Late afternoon then finds our immediate family meandering up the street to Wagoner's Tree lot, where we have picked out our tree every year for more than 15 years. We come home, drag the tree in the house and start decorating. Point of Grace Christmas CD must be playing and Russian tea must be served. It truly is the highlight of our year, a tradition we hold to tightly and joyfully.

After the tree is decorated we gather around our table and take out our blessing jar. This special little jar sits on our kitchen table year round, reminding us to take time to appreciate God's blessings, both small and large. No special paper needed. Any scrap will do! We then go around the table and one by one open the slips of paper, seeing the blessings of our lives laid before us. As we read from the past year we are always reminded of the ways God has taken the good and bad times and turned them into family memories, a tangible picture of God's love for us. I cannot begin to tell you how we look forward to this time. As our family ages and changes we welcome new members and treasure those to come in future years. 

For the jar itself I used my trusty Cricut and cut the word blessings out of vinyl. I attached a ribbon and button and it was done!

Our little jar, filled with the promise of tradition and memories.

What do I do with the blessings after we read them on Thanksgiving night? I save them until I'm ready to scrapbook them! The layout below is from 2005 and features just a few of the blessings from that year. Not one of my finest pages but it is done and in our album as a reminder of God's goodness and those traditions that make our family unique.

When we remodeled my scrapbook room last year I used every item imaginable for storage: baskets, pasta jars, spice jars, boxes, drawers, and of course, mason jars. Here is part of my button storage.

I also store ribbon in mason jars.

Apparently my cat loves the jars as well.

I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse into my love of mason jars and our family tradition of the Blessing Jar. I hope you'll try this in your own family and be blessed.