a season of Thanks – Two + Me & You

Happy November! The leaves have officially changed and started to fall in great big fluffy piles in my backyard. They’re so pretty to look at why bother raking them, lol.

This month I’m feeling great. I’m 3 pounds away from meeting my first goal weight (I have multiple goal weights to get down to my “happy” weight.) I’ve told myself I want to hit this first goal weight by Thanksgiving and yesterday morning I woke up thinking it was truly achievable – I even put on some old grey jeans that I haven’t worn since before I got pregnant with Rae! Unfortunately, I still can’t wear my rings. That’s a little depressing but trying to not get discouraged by it, and if I can hit this small goal weight then I’ll be thankful for that.

It’s also my birthday this week, Friday to be exact. I will be the big 3-8. Holy crap that’s almost 40! Wow, when did that happen? I don’t feel 38. Then again, I don’t feel 37. You know what they say, age is just a number. I just wish my number was 25 *wink*

This year I wanted do something special with the girls for Thanksgiving, a new tradition (hopefully) that we could carry on for years. Something to help teach them what it means to be grateful. So we made a “Thankful Tree.” Each Sunday night, after dinner, we’ll sit at the table and talk about what we’re thankful for and write it down on paper leaves to hang on our tree. We did our first one this past weekend and you know what Grace said she was thankful for? Her family. Melt my heart.

There’s still time for you to make your own Thankful Tree – I made this one in about 30 minutes.

Here’s what you need and how I did it (all of which I found in and around my house):

vase or canister of some sort (to hold the tree) – be creative! I needed something plastic since I plan to have the girls help and hang their own leaves. I did a quick walk through my basement and found canisters from an old food saver kit my mom had given me. We don’t use the food saver and the canisters were just collecting dust so I just repurposed them! I pulled two different sizes because I wasn’t sure what would fit best in the space I had.
floral foam brick (or styrofoam, I just happened to have a block of floral foam from another project)
branches – from your backyard!
decorative bead filler
fall-colored ribbon
construction paper
scissors
yarn
hole punch
pruning shears

Directions:

1 – Place your floral foam inside of your container/vase. Cut the foam as needed so that it fits.

2 – Take your branches and start to position them in different places on the foam. You will need your pruning shears to clip the branches down to get to your desired size.

TIP: Once you have all the branches in place, take your tree to it’s final destination to make sure that you don’t need to clip any branches in order for it to fit. My tree is going on my foyer table and once I tested it out I needed to reposition and clip some of the branches that were hitting the wall and staircase.

3 – Fill your vase with your decorative bead filler (I would prefer to use pretty natural-colored stones (I found some at the dollar store) but I had these clear gems already and to me free is even better than $1 + a trip to the store. Maybe next year I can switch them out.)

4 – Tie a pretty piece of ribbon around your vase to finish it off

5 – Trace and cut out leaves on different colors of construction paper – I used this free printable template from Lily Ashbury found on Pinterest here

6 – Put holes in each leaf using a hole punch, then use yarn to tie the leaves to the tree branches

Viola, our Thankful Tree!