This year I am hosting Thanksgiving at my house. For the first time ever! I’ve been scouring Pottery Barn catalogs and Martha Stewart’s website for cute decorations I can make. Well, the other day I found the perfect decor–on a blog, of course! Sweet Life in the Valley made these adorable Autumn Wreaths out of cardboard and leaves. I thought I’d do the same—only switch it up just a bit!

First, we went on a leaf scavenger hunt. We have these gorgeous trees that look like fireworks at the front of our neighborhood. So we took a trek all the way down there (it took about 30 minutes with all the, “MOMMY! LOOK AT THIS MOST BEAUTIFUL LEAF EVER!”) scored a bag of leaves and then climbed back home. Thankfully my husband was coming home at the same time and rescued Lydia because she was “SO. TIRED. MOMMY.”

When we got home, I grabbed a Pampered Chef cardboard box I had been saving (it was just such a nice box!) and cut out the letters T, H, A, N, K, S.

Sweet Life in the Valley suggested using crafty glue to attach the leaves to the cardboard. And I think that would have been better. We only had a mini tube of crafty glue then had to replace it with school glue. We tried smearing the glue on the cardboard AND dabbing it right on the leaf. Either way worked fine.

Then we just pushed the leaves on as best we could. Lydia did the letter T while I did HANKS. Remarkably, her T turned out better than all mine put together. The more leaves you can squish on there, the better. If you can find newly fallen, semi soft leaves it will be much easier than using a crumbly crunchy old leaf.

I had this great idea to tape the letters to a ribbon vertically and then hang it on the front door so people could see it driving by. But our door is brown and the leaves are brown. So. Not so sure you can see it. I hung it on the back door to get the spacing correct and take a picture. Asa pulled off about 1/4 of the leaves during this process. Lydia and I are going to have to do surgery on some of them because it looks much less-preschool-craftish when you the cardboard is completely hidden by leaves.

Regardless, they turned out cute and it was super fun to make such a big craft. What do you think?

(This week I’m thinking of doing a video tutorial about how to easily cut letters out of paper…or cardboard as the case may be. Anyone interested?)

Watching the leaves fall at our house is like watching TV. Lydia will be doing something else and then all of the sudden burst out, “LOOK! MOMMY! THE LEAVES ARE FALLING!” Then we have to run to the windows and look at the leaves. I love it.

Last week we went on a little leaf adventure around the neighborhood. I think I bundled them up too much but Lydia loves to wear her coat and hat. And Asa looks so cute in his, so what could I do?

After we collected all our leaves, look what we made! OK, so this one was mine…

I just put a blob of glue in the middle of the paper and let Lydia glue some leaves around it. She didn’t quite connect the feathers=leaves thing. She wanted to tear the leaves up, but still she had fun. She also found a green sequin on the floor and had to add that. I cut out a turkey body, beak and gobble-waddle-thingie and we glued those right on top of the leaves for a VERY autumn-y turkey!

More ideas for your leaf turkeys:

• laminate and use as placemats
• do a smaller version on the front of a greeting card
• make an even smaller version for a Thanksgiving dinner placecard
• cut a long strip of paper and staple/glue around kids head. Glue turkey to front for a turkey hat!

Happy November!

Today’s craft: Our Fall Family Tree!

I’m sure there are tons of examples of this on the innerwebs – but I modified one I saw on First School from a “family hand flower” to a “family hand tree.”  Basically, we I traced each family member’s hand onto a piece of construction paper, and then we I cut each hand shape out.  EJ loves to use his scissors, although his ability to cut out shapes needs work.

Then came the exciting part for EJ – the glue, of course!  I had glued a large cut-out of a tree trunk onto a 11″x14″ piece of white paper, and EJ struck with the glue.

While I made suggestions for the first two leaf-hands to go on the top of the tree, EJ decided the other two would be “falling” from the tree.  Well done, kiddo!

I love this little family tree!  I might put our names on it later, so in 20 years I don’t forget which hand is EJ’s and which is Dieter’s.