Dare to be Thankful: Thanksgiving Tree

Week one of Dare to DIY is here (and the linkup is over at Shift Ctrl Art)! This week’s theme is Dare to be Thankful, and I did the most original, mind-blowingly creative, never-before-done project.

Or maybe you’ve seen thankful trees done a million times before, but hey. Go with it.

Forrest is finally getting old enough to really be excited about holidays. Up until now, I haven’t done a whole ton of holiday kid stuff—when I’ve tried to encourage holiday excitement or start traditions in the past, he mostly waffled between confusion and ambivalence. Hardly worth the effort on my part. But he’s been very interested in holidays lately, and it has been so fun to fuel that excitement. So a week or two ago, we capitalized on his holiday excitement to have a little family lesson on being thankful.

I used my Silhouette Portrait to cut two different leaf shapes in a variety of colors, and gathered a few twigs and sticks from the backyard. I dug these two pots out of my garage, as well as some leftover moss and foam from older projects. So this turned out to be a free project, pieced together with leftover bits of other projects—is there any better kind?

So one evening after dinner recently, we talked to Forrest about what it means to be thankful, and we each took turns naming things we felt thankful for, and writing them on our leaves. I used hot glue to attach each leaf to the tree.

I didn’t change much in this little vignette from my Halloween decorating—I just swapped out the candy corn hurricanes for the thankful trees and called it good. I like how they turned out—those twisted branches are pretty dang cool, if you ask me, and it’s fun to look at the words on our leaves and especially to remind Forrest, if he’s being grouchy or rude, of the things he wrote on his thankful leaves. Forrest was not feeling particularly deep the day we did our thanksgiving tree activity, actually—most of his leaves are devoted to gratefulness for various toys, his blankie earned a whopping 3 leaves, and apparently none of his family members deserve a spot on the tree (although our little neighbor Abigail got a leaf). #offended

Make sure to check out the other cohosts’ projects for some awesome inspiration, and visit Shift Ctrl Art to link up YOUR thankful projects!

Merci Beaucoup vignette at Shift Ctrl Art // Crazy Thankful Sign at Décor and the Dog 

Thankful Trees (me) // Thanksgiving Thumbprint Wood Tray at Newly Woodwards