Being grateful is an art. In a cultural where very few of us are in actual, dire need, life is expected to run pretty smoothly. When it doesn’t, instead of being gracious, many of us fly off the handle, or tap our foot, or honk our horn with agitation. When things go smoothly, we take for granted that someone paved the way to make our day swell.
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| Unsolicited Thank You Letter from Natalie. |
I saw this idea last month on Pinterest and knew I wanted to do it this November with my kids.
Karly over at Jellybean Junkyard created this gratitude board out of wood, craft paper, ribbon, and vinyl letters and numbers (pictured above). As much as I knew I wanted to recreate this idea, I also knew deep in my soul mine would never look this good.
1) I don’t own a sillouette or cricut machine. I know they’re all the rage, but this here girl isn’t good with keeping up with the latest gadgets.
2) I have stickers, but not that many ‘2’s.
3) I’m not going to spend time tying that many little ribbons.
4) Nor take the time to mod podge scrap paper onto cut envelopes.
BUT, I’m really okay with having one that gets the job done in a less fancy way. So instead of finding a piece of wood from the scrap pile I don’t have, I found the bottom of a pizza box. I know, classy.
Then I took the little red craft envelopes I bought last month in preparation for making a pretty gratitude board and a refill from a stocking stuffer notepad we gave the girls last year.
I cut the 4″ envelope exactly in half, the bottom half naturally making a pocket…
On the open side, I glued down the “top” of the envelope to make it into a pocket as well.
I lined up the 30 envelope pockets on the pizza box, wrote numbers on them with a Sharpie (again, very glamorous) and wrote “Give Thanks” at the top in big letters… with the same sharpie. I hot-glued each one in their delegated spot.
I cut the tiny papers in half and slipped them into the pockets. We’ll take them out each night at dinner and each family member will write what they’re thankful for. Well… I’ll write down what the kids say. The papers are really quite small!
Hopefully after 30 days of practicing gratefulness it will become a habit they’ll keep with them forever.
I Thessalonians 5:18: In everything give thanks for this is the will of God.
(c) 2016 Leighann Marquiss
Comments (4)
What a neat idea. I think this would be a gteat idea just before the Christmas give me’s come into play.
What an excellent idea and your way to make it with items I have on hand. I will make one this week and take it to the grandchildren to do all month. Happy day to you. Becky
I did something similar a few years ago, but only for the week of THanksgiving. I cut out a turkey body from a brown paper grocery bag, and then I cut out tail feathers from different colors of construction paper. On each feather, we wrote things we were thankful for and taped them to the turkey body. On Thanksgiving day, my sister and her family added to the turkey. Then we read all of them aloud before dinner. 🙂
-Debbie
i love this! and i love that you made it YOURS!