I hope you had a lovely thanksgiving — we certainly did! Yes, it was very soon after Jonas’ birth… but we kept it simple (I’m a turkey breast kind of girl — who wants to deal with that much bird anyway?) and my wonderful in-laws made it all possible by alternately cooking and holding the baby. My sisters (+ a special friend) were able to come up from Provo and join us despite snow the day before, and it was great! Man, I LOVE Thanksgiving food, especially my MIL’s famous monkey bread… that didn’t last long ha!

Anyway, I wanted to share a fun little tradition I’ve been developing on over the years. It’s nothing particularly original and I’ve been inspired by various bloggers, but I really like how it turned out this year: behold, our thankful tree! (modeled by these silly turkeys…)

The concept is simple: create a bare tree with brown paper (I actually have rolls of it that I use as wrapping paper — brown paper packages anyone?) and then have paper leaves and pens handy for people to write things/people they are grateful for. Last year I had a string with clothespins for the leaves, this year I made a whole tree, and I think it turned out pretty cool!

Some people were being a little silly with some of these… 🙂 I meant to get it up sooner in the month, but we got kind of distracted by a baby that refused to come and then the actual baby himself… next year! Obviously nothing particularly original, I know many families have versions of this, but I love how it’s a simple way to encourage gratitude and to count your blessings!

Now, on to Christmas!