Gratitude Banner

Pinterest is a dangerous place.

I love browsing and looking at all the amazing things people are creating/cooking/baking/etc. but man, it really is a time-sucker. One minute it’s 9:30 and then suddenly it’s midnight. Anybody with me on this? The struggle is real.

One thing I love to look up is traditions that others do in their families, specifically for the holidays. I grew up with a few traditions in my family but am excited to add even more now that I have a little family of my own. I decided to start a new tradition this year based on an idea that I have seen on Pinterest, but actually learned from my sister-in-law first.

A couple years ago I went to her house (around this time of year) and she had a brown paper tree up on the wall in the kitchen. Throughout the month she and her family would write things they were grateful for on little leaves and tape them to the tree. I LOVED this idea and have wanted to do something similar ever since.

I had an idea to do a centerpiece with branches and hang the leaves from there but decided to go with a banner, which could serve as a cute decoration AND a gratitude-based tradition throughout the month of November.

Next year I will try to get some cute, fall-themed decor going on. One step at a time! 

 I really like how it turned out, but I really wish I had a Cricut. Although it wasn’t too hard to trace and cut out the leaves, it would have been much faster to use a machine. (The ivory leaves are actually thin cardboard cutouts that I found at Michaels and I used those to trace onto the gold/brown paper.)

 Also, I think I would rather have little mini leaves to write on instead of circles and I would clip them in-between the gaps of the bigger leaves. This was my original plan with the circles but I didn’t like the look of that. So, I clipped them on top of the leaves instead.

So far, Tate has said he is grateful for Jesus, church, many of his friends here in CT, chicken nuggets, Chick-fil-A, milk, grandparents, Mommy, Daddy, Emmy and “Tate.” (In regards to Tate being grateful for himself, I thought he was just reciting our family prayers because Jordan and I always say we are grateful for him, but I don’t pray about Chick-fil-A, chicken nuggets or milk so I’m not quite sure…)

 All in all I am happy with how it turned out and am glad I can reuse this banner each year! Yay for new traditions!