Giving Thanks

How do you define gratitude?

I for one, am very grateful lately. My life may be insanely hectic these days, but I have been particularly blessed this year.  I try to remember that as I run around stressing out.

Apparently, I am not the only one thinking along these lines.  When Lisa and I put together our Harvest Party last month, we came up with a Thanks Tree for our centerpiece.  We liked it so well that we decided to create a Thanks Tree Kit to sell at the shop, so others could enjoy it.

We started with half a dozen. . . and they sold in two days.  So I created a dozen more and have more in the works.  I love party planning, and the idea of hosting Thanksgiving dinner and decking my house out is  festive fall decor, with delicious scents wafting from the kitchen and hoards of family members milling around, helping with the fixings and enjoying each other's company. . . yeah, I love that.

However, I live eight hours from my family and being one of eight children, and the only one farther than an hour from my parents pretty much means I NEVER get to host family parties.  It makes me sad.  'Cause I KNOW I could throw a mean party.  Thanksgiving dinner. . . oh, one day.

Many of you, however, might get that privilege this year.  For those of you not within driving distance of the shop, you COULD buy a kit from the Etsy Store, OR, I'll tell you what we did.

Gather a bunch of sticks from your yard and plunk them in a big vase.  Be sure they fit beneath your light fixture on your table.  For fun, and since this is about defining our gratitude, we rolled up some vintage dictionary pages and tied them to the branches with sisal twine.

On our tree we used some of  my weathered clothes pins from my clothesline.

I like the dirty, aged look they have acquired over the years, but for our kit, (and if you don't have lovely weathered clothes pins) we purchased brand spanking new (and cheap) clothes pins. . .

. . . sprayed them with white spray paint. . .

. . . and rubbed a little stain on them.  A few even stuck to the newspaper and some print was left on the clothes pin.  I dig that, so I left it.

Then we cut out oak leaves from recycled looking paper and aged the edges with Distress Ink:

On a few we wrote words of thanks.  On the rest, have your guests write things they are grateful for.

All that is left is to deck out your thanks tree.  And for fun, we hung a little moss here and there just for aesthetics.

Have you taken time to give thanks lately?

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