our thanksgiving tree.

I'm not crafty.  Not even a little bit.  I've always wanted to be.  Like my friend Katy Pancake-Boal.  The type of person who can just whip up some little arts and crafts project and it look so amazing over 1,000 people would pin it on pinterest.  But, she's an elementary school teacher so it's sort of required.

Even as a little girl I was never that great in Art Class.  I liked making little crafts but my Type A perfectionist personality would come out and if it didn't look just like the teachers I would be so annoyed.

But, I'm moving past that.  I decided that despite my lack of creativity I would just make it work.  My kids (at least at this age!) don't know any better so during nap time today I created this little tree.

 It's not perfect, but most trees aren't.  Making it more realistic!  And, I totally just took some scissors and started cutting....very unlike me.  But, I like how it turned out.  So did Lucy.

 Then, I added some leaves.  My leaves were totally irregular shaped, not like I had planned, but I went with it.  Because nap time only lasts for so long and I wanted to finish this before I had an extra "helper."

 Then, tonight after dinner, we added our handprint leaves, including one thing we are all thankful for.  I really wanted to start some sort of Thanksgiving tradition with my family.  I love this holiday but it often gets forgotten in the midst of Christmas planning.  Each night we'll add another handprint (one from each of us) with a note about what we are thankful for.  I'm pretty excited about it!

 Tonight's words were:
Carter - my family
Lucy - Yoshi (Carter helped her decide)
Julie - a nice house
Matt - mama (I was a little annoyed with him at the time because of his negativity for the thankfulness tree, so it was sort of his apology note - either way it was very nice!)

I can't wait for Thanksgiving morning when we can read every little handprint!