Easy Thanksgiving Tree tutorial

In my Happiness post, I talked about 5 ways to be happier.  #5 was to acknowledge your happiness.  One of the easiest ways to find things to be happy about is to follow the old adage- and Count your Blessings. 

Recognizing what we already have is a giant leap into happiness.  And keeping them on display in a beautiful way is simply an added bonus. 🙂

I wanted to do a quick activity with my children to create a Thanksgiving tree.  I didn’t have a ton of time so I pulled out my Cricut and picked the first cartridge with a leaf I could find.  It happened to be the Doodlecharm Cartridge.

 I loaded my 24″ mat with paper and put it into the machine.  Selected the leaf shape and  had it “auto fill”.  Then I let it cut.

 Pull off the excess paper to reveal the leaves.

 Normally here I would just pull the leaves off with my fingernails, but I was given the new tool set to try and I wanted to give it a go.  I was really pleasantly surprised with how well the spatula worked to lift off the leaves.  Often when I pull shapes off the mat they can curl because of how I pull them off.  The spatula made them all lift straight off and stay flat.  I will say that when I tried it again with a different mat and a softer paper the results weren’t as great.  The paper just smashed up and the spatula couldn’t get under it, so I’d try it on one of the pieces you don’t want to keep first before trying to get it under the shapes you want.

 I used a tiny hole punch and some twine to tie loops on each of the leaves and then I gave them to the children to write down things they were grateful for.  Dad’s job, cookies and nature all made the list. 

 Finally, we hung the leaves on the branches I still had left over from my Halloween mantel. 

I finished it off with my apothecary jars and these darling pumpkins my cousin made me a few years ago.  It’s a simple display but I absolutely love it.  

How do you “Count your Blessings?”  Do you have any Thanksgiving traditions?

xoxo,
Amy

*I was given a Cricut tool kit to try in exchange for a creative post using them.  The project and opinions are all mine.