It's Never Too Late To Be Thankful

Pinterest has consumed my crafty world! There are so many neat and cute ideas and projects in the vast bucket of Pinterest, and I just don't have the time to do all of them. This Thanksgiving, I searched out many projects and accomplished a couple with the boys. We made Hand Print Turkeys, always a favorite when it involves painting their hands! And we made the Thankful Turkey napkin rings. Although, I didn't use them as napkin rings, I used them to tape around small cups that I filled with fruit for one of the boy's preschool Thanksgiving party.
However, there was one that I absolutely intended to do no matter what: The Give Thanks Gratitude Board.
It is such a neat idea! Each member of the family records what they are thankful for on a card for each of the 30 days of November. Then next year, you can use the back of the card, or add more cards as needed to each day. I just loved the thought of using this year after year and being able to reread previous years' and relive all those thankful memories, especially those recorded by my children. Of course, I will write the boys' responses down until they are able to write, and I'll write my husband's responses because he doesn't like to write anything and avoids it whenever possible, but it's still a great idea.
However, as usual, time goes faster than I like. November 1st came and went and I still hadn't even purchased the items I lacked to start the project. I have a plethora of crafting items in my attic. It's like a Hobby Lobby/Walmart/JoAnn's/Michael's melting pot. But I was still lacking the board, coin envelopes, coordinating ribbon and Fall scraping paper. I didn't want to make the item out of a wooden board as the directions suggested, because I just didn't want it to be that heavy. I knew I had burlap and I love burlap, so I used a foam display board and hot glued the burlap over it. The only coin envelopes I found were at the office supply stores and they were so expensive! I didn't want to spend $28 for 250 envelopes, when I only needed 30. So I improvised and used small mailing envelopes. I simply sealed and cut them, then painted each one with a sponge to make them brown and no one can tell that they are regular mailing envelopes. Plus I can replace my stash for a mere $1. :)
I spent a total of $8. Now I have a beautiful Give Thanks Gratitude Board. So what if we didn't start using it until November 14? And so what if we missed a day because of sickness? We still have 7 days completed and 9 more days of potential memories to record.  I am thankful I did the project this year, otherwise I would have missed out on such precious responses from my boys like; "I'm thankful for God", "I'm thankful for my pillow", "I'm thankful for my new jacket", "I'm thankful for my backpack you promised to get me for Hanukkah" and so many more. I'm thankful I decided it was okay for the project to be late, because it's never too late to be thankful!

Here's a link to the Give Thanks Gratitude Board tutorial I found on Pinterest:
http://jellybeanjunkyard.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/tuesday-tutorial-give-thanks-gratitude-board/