A Million Little Things: make it a month with an attitude of GRATITUDE

Here in the good ol' USA, we celebrate Thanksgiving Day in November. One day. Why not celebrate being thankful all month and making it a daily habit? That's my goal with today's project.

I wanted to create something that would help me stop for a moment each day and recognize the many blessings in my life. I hope it helps me change my attitude each and every day and creates a habit of being thankful daily with intention.

Meet my gratitude garland.

It's a simple project that took about 2 hours to put together. Kids could definitely help out with a project like this and will have fun creating!

Here's the plan. The garland will hang along the mantel during the month of November. Every day, Mom & I will write down a blessing or something, someone, some circumstance that we are thankful for and drop our slips of paper into the cone for that day. We'll also invite guests, friends and family to participate when they stop by the house as well. At the end of the month, we'll have quite the collection to compile into a little bag or even a gratitude journal to keep. AND we can store our little paper cones and use it again year after year. Love that.

So here's how we made it...

First, I sifted through my stash of patterned paper and chose 20-25 different sheets with fall-ish colors. I downloaded a paper cone template online (just google "paper cone template" and you'll find an abundance you can use!) and used it as our pattern. We got all our papers cut and then glued them together with some scrapbook adhesive. I punched out scallopped circles to use for the number stickers. Once we had our cones all put together, we punched a whole on each side of the cone. Next, we grabbed our roll of jute (jute is inexpensive & can be found in local craft stores & probably at walmart, too!) and strung them on in order. Now how did we get them hung up on the mantel? There was no way tape was going to hold the garland up so we ran out to the flower bed and borrowed a few bricks we use as edging, covered them with orange felt and there ya go! I love making do with what I have. :)

I encourage you - even if you don't get to it until later in the week - to create a similar project for the month. A thankful heart keeps away negative thinking and we all need a little more thankful and a little positive in our lives, right?! Make a difference and create some new habits - being earnestly thankful each day.

Happy Thanksgiving month!!

xo.
Rebekah