Showing gratitude

This year I decided that we were not going to skip the month of November-seriously!! I am guilty of going from Halloween to 100% Christmas holiday spirit on November 1st. In doing that, I always loose a great opportunity to teach my kids the art of Thanksgiving-a beautiful prelude to the holidays!! I saw some great ideas that have been posted but felt like I wanted something concrete-something that we could look back on and enjoy as the kids get older-hence the Gratitude Journal. I created the one below for under $3!! How is this going to work? Tonight at dinner I am going to present this to my family with the explanation that November is a month to give thanks (perhaps this will cut down on the "gimme" attitude that we all-yes I am included here-get when the season kicks in to high gear). Each night at dinner the journal will come out and each of us will have the opportunity to write down things that we are thankful for. I am going to suggest that we all participate, fully knowing that the more verbose (Ella) will want to write a book of thanks and the less interested (Peris) will cringe at having to participate at all. Hey, it's a family thing!!

Maybe this year we can focus on what we have and it will take our eyes off of what we want. Maybe this year we can grab a hold of this idea of gratitude and let it spill over to the other 11 months of the year. Maybe this year we can begin to see clearly how much we have and see that what we have has very little to do with things but with the people that we love.

My color scheme-a pretty paisley, matching leaves, a burnt orange and a blue-gray

Accent ribbon is a brownish/auburn with a bit of sparkle

I used a cheap spiral notebook with the thought that the pages would be easily turned by little and big fingers a like.


First I cut a strip of the leaf paper to use by the spiral edge of the notebook

After cutting and gluing that down, I traced the larger paisley paper and cut it down to fit the rest of the exposed front cover

After gluing the paisley portion down, I covered the seam by gluing down the small strip of ribbon-it turned out so pretty!!! Very fall-ish.

Emmy and Fiona thought that we should put something on the "boring" inside cover. We used a cutter and made the two circles and I wrote (my handwriting is bad!!) "Giving Thanks Journal" in the front.

Happy giving thanks!!!!