Today is Grandparents Day! Happy Grandparents Day to all of you Grandmothers, Grandfathers, Great Grandmothers, and Great Grandfathers!

Not many are aware that there is a national holiday to celebrate grandparents. When I told my husband the other day that we were working on a project for grandparents day he was like “huh?”

It was in 1978 when Grandparents Day was officially recognized as a national holiday. It was the goal of Marian McQuade to make the youth aware and educate them the importance of seniors in our community. McQade wanted to make them aware of how much seniors have contributed to our history and also encouraged the youth to “adopt” a grandparent.

At first, Grandparents Day was only recognized by the state of West Virginia. When the idea of it being proclaimed as a national holiday was proposed and brought to the U.S. Senate, it died. McQade organized supporters, congressman, etc. in all fifty states for it to become a state holiday. Once she had proclamations of 43 states, she sent copies of the proclamations to Senator Randolph. At that time the U.S. Congress met again and requested that President Jimmy Carter sign a proclamation that proclaimed that the first Sunday after Labor Day, every year, be National Grandparents Day.

The statute cites the day’s purpose: “…to honor grandparents, to give grandparents an opportunity to show love for their children’s children, and to help children become aware of strength, information, and guidance older people can offer”.

All of this information was taken from Wikipedia and can be found here.

 

Grandparents Day Tiles

I have several ideas posted on my Pinterest page of ideas for gifts to give for Grandparents Day.

Monte and I found this idea here, but I changed it up a bit.

While I was at Michaels purchasing stuff for my DIY chalkboard, I picked up the supplies needed to do this project. Instead of tiles, I purchased wood squares, a can of colored spray paint, acrylic paint for Monte’s hand, and paint pens. All of this cost me about $25.00.

I then took the four boards outside and spray painted them. The spray painted I used was for indoor/outdoor use and left a glossy finish. On the can it said it dried in about 10 minutes. It DID dry quickly! I was able to get a couple coats sprayed, on both sides, in about an hour.

The next day, was the fun part! I had Travis help me with brushing paint onto Monte’s hand and placing it on the tiles. Monte did not really understand what was going on and was more interested in what the gooey stuff was on his hand.

Afterwards, I let the hand print dry then took the paint pens which are AWESOME and wrote in Grandparents Day 2013 and Love, Monte.