"Insta"-replay #22, a thankful heart is a happy heart

Last week was of course  Thanksgiving.  And I hope everyone else had as thankful of a week as me.

I was thankful to go to Doctor Who's 50 anniversary episode in 3D!!!  It was amazing and I loved every 3D moment of it.

I even loved the spilled popcorn.  Dumping an entire large popcorn may be a bit embarrassing bit it does guarantee no one will sit next to you.

I am thankful for my mom and her hands on crafting with the girls.  They love working on the projects she lays out for them.

I am thankful for family to share a feast with.  This is our first year with Grandpa Bill and it was great to spend thanksgiving with him and mom.

I am thankful for Dr Pepper and the "free with purchase" when I was going to buy soda anyways.  Easy gift for sweet hubby.

 I am thankful for the craftiness of my daughters.  Their creativity saves me the effort of planning things.  And I am thankful for their aunt who let Merry use her stamps.

I am thankful for my other family.  Sure it has taken a few (10) years but they are less "in-laws" and more people I want to hangout with.  Family time with them is a blessing.

And finally I am thankful Christmas is coming!!! It is the most wonderful time of the year!  We ended the week by picking out a tree.  Now we just need to decorate it!

I am very excited for the weeks to come and all the Christmas prep!

The Thankful Tree

It is finally Autumn, the season of Pumpkin Lattes and other fall stuff.  Besides coffee Autumn always makes me think of thankfulness and handprint crafts.  Thankfulness is pretty self explanatory, with Thanks Giving coming up and all, but I'm not sure why "handprint" crafts.  Maybe because in school teachers had more energy for crafts early in the school year, maybe because handprints lend themselves so well to autumn craft projects or maybe I'm just a tad crazy.  What ever the reason, I have been planning a Thanksgiving handprint tree for a few months.

 First we traced our hands (for the leaves)

 Then I tried to figure out a way to make the tree trunk.  There were some brown lunch sacks in with the construction paper.  So I twisted then into branches.

 Next I hot glued them in a tree shape.  Hot glue worked great, especially since I was out of tape.

 While I glued, the girls finished tracing their leaves and cutting them out.

 Next we wrote what we were thankful for on each leaf.

 Charry kept thinking up more (probably since it was bed time.)

Then we put our leaves on the tree.

Here is our work in progress, we plan to keep adding leaves and thinking up more things we are thankful for all season long.