"Your Thanksgiving meal with your family should be filled with thanks and joy so does it not make sense to do what you can to make it less wasteful too? Take the time this year to really show your family and nature how grateful you are for what natures has given you. It is a lot easier than you think and it wont cost you an arm or a turkey leg in the process, unless you go vegetarian or vegan in the process, but you don't have to if you don't want too."

Most of the tips are super simple and don't take any extra time. Some will help you make Thanksgiving even more fun, such as making a pumpkin pie from scratch, shopping at your local farmers' market, and using a fresh plant for your centerpiece.

Thanks to Ecolicious, we're sending $1000 to Food for Everyone.

http://www.squidoo.com/20-plus-ways-to-have-a-tasty-eco-friendly-thanksgiving-meal

It's packed with turkey and cranberries and all.

Read the story of Sydney and her special diet.

As lensmaster azpoppy starts off:

"My dog Sydney is half Australian Shepherd and half Belgian Shepherd (Tervuren type). I trained her to be a Hearing Ear dog and she has been a wonderful companion over the past 13 years. There is much more to her story, which I plan to write about at another time, but for the purpose of this lens, I will explain some of her eating and food issues and how I wound up making her food for her."

Congratulations (and thanks!) to azpoppy for winning $1000 for the Humane Society.

When you're done eating Thanksgiving dinner... put it on your face!

A whole new spin on how to use leftovers.

Here's how pumpkins, cranberries, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and green beans can be used as DIY beauty treatments. There's even a recipe for a turkey fat mask... but that's only for the more adventurous among us.

Thanks to Ener-G and this winning Cookoff lens, Squidoo is donating $1000 to the Madison Valley Aquatic Center.

P.S. There's still time to enter your own Cookoff lens! But hurry. Turkey Day is next week.

Here's the backstory and confluence of events.

Christene wanted to enter a lens in the Cookoff, to support the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
But she doesn't cook! (Says she).
So she thought: I don't have to do this alone. (Smart Christene).
And asked friends from an online community if they had a family recipe she could feature.
Someone did. (Yum).
Christene made the page. (She's a pro).
Earmarked her lens royalties to JDRF.
November also happens to be Diabetes Awareness month. (Good timing).
Entered it in the contest. (Thanks!)
She made it a special tribute to her friends, Mary Kathryn's family.
And today, of all days, the same day Christene's lens gets selected as a Cookoff winner and as Lens of the Day, she also learns that it would have been Mary Kathryn's 7th birthday. (Even better timing).

And so, thanks to Christene, we're donating $1000 to JDRF.

See. Told you it wasn't about the potatoes.

P.S. Only 7 more days until Thanksgiving, only 7 more Cookoff Winners we can select. (Out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. Oh my). Give yourself a leg up and email us your Cookoff entry at squidoocookoff@squidoo.com. We'll keep picking winners, and then on Thanksgiving Day we'll put all the winners in a big poll and let you vote on who should get the $5000 grand prize.

In this lens, Kim shares this treat from a collection of favorite recipes her mother compiled shortly before Kim got married. She tells a lovely story, and includes simple instructions for making pumpkin parfaits in classy parfait flutes. I can just see the kids wanting to put this together!  Don't they look delicious?  And simple too - just a few ingredients, mix them up, refrigerate them, and enjoy.

For her work, we're sending $1000 to Earthjustice.

http://www.squidoo.com/pumpkin-parfait