thankful tree

I am a faithful reader of the 71toes blog.  Travis calls me "the blog stalker". I am not ashamed to say that I am a blog reader, I get a lot of great ideas and good advice from the blogs I read. In my opinion, there are a lot worse things that I could be doing with my time, but probably some better things too,...oh well, I'm not a big TV watcher so this is my one guilty indulgence. Oh, besides Coke.

Anyway.....I got this great idea from www.71toes.blogspot.com.  Last year I read about her "family thankful tree", and loved the idea. (you will have to look up the exact post for this year in the November section, and last years under the Thankfulness section, I am not handy enough to link the actual post) I wanted to do one for my family but with being in the middle of a move it just didn't get done. So this year I was determined to start this in our family and make it tradition.  I want to use the whole month of November to think about thankfulness and gratitude.  I want to personally think more about all of my many blessings.  I want my kids to see what abundance they have compared to so many.  I want us to be THANKFUL!

I wasted the first part of the month deciding "how" I was going to start this project.  I knew I wanted our tree to be visible to the family on a daily basis and I didn't have a great spot in the kitchen that I thought was big enough.   I also wanted something permanent, more like a decoration that the kids would count on every year.  I wanted it to be cute enough that I would be excited  to put it up each November 1st when I'm pulling down my Halloween decorations. So it came a little late in November this year, but hopefully it will be a family tradition that my kids remember for years to come.

And here it is, and I am very happy with my version of the thankful tree, if I do say so myself!

We really are more "thankful" than this, only Austin has done his leaves.  Cutting out the leaves took me almost as long as making the whole thing.  I will definitely use a die-cut next year.  So anyway the other kids should be doing there leaves tonight when they get home.