Turkey and Thanks

In case you don’t remember, last year Addie and I made hand turkeys with our friend Hadley. Check it out HERE.

This year, it went a bit better… I call that a “win”. With that, I wanted to kick the crafting season off with what we did for Thanksgiving… check it out! (No video this year… need a better cell phone video camera!)

Using paper, scissors, glue and googly eyes, we made these beauties- sure to light up your fridge with Turkey Day magic!

For starters, I cut all of my paper. I trace large and small cans to make the face, and just wing it for the legs. The nose is a simple triangle, and the waddle was my favorite part 🙂

I laid everything out so that it would be easy to assemble. We made three, one for each set of grandparents and one for us! (And cut some extras to share)…

Next… the paint! Like last year, we used Crayola’s Washable Finger Paints and mixed colors to get all the ones we wanted. In the box we used yellow, red, green and blue, then mixed yellow and red for orange and red and blue for purple- these turkeys are far more colorful than last year’s! Using plastic plates and spoons to mix (EASY clean up), we laid out our palette of colors:

On our background sheet of paper, I traced the outline of the larger circle of the turkey body as a guideline for where I would place Addie’s hands:

And then it began… Paint dipping!!!

For Hadley, both mama and papa were helping. I LOVE crafts that get the whole family involved… and it certainly helps with the baby clean up!

The project was hugely successful this year and I love that we are keeping this a tradition- surely it will only get easier in some ways and so much more difficult in others, but with the silly memories we create as parents and the stories we share wine over, there is no way we will miss making these year after year!

Addie and I also made a “G-I-V-E-T-H-A-N-K-S” banner for our kitchen. By “Addie and I” I mean we, because it was all cutting and gluing- but I had A LOT of help removing all paper scraps from their pile and scattering them around the house- because it was necessary. Clearly 🙂

I took squares of paper that I had never used from my scrap-booking days, folded them in half to form a triangle, then cut- Be sure to leave the seam intact so that you can hang your banner pieces on a string.

After that, I cut out my letters freehand (they may not be perfect… but neither am I!):

Once my letters were cut out, I glued them to the triangles and hung them over a string. I chose to glue the triangles shut to keep them in place and so they wouldn’t fall off:

I hung the banner over our windows in the kitchen- which is also above where I hang our “card station” every year (the place I hang all of the cards that we get for the holidays). I love that our love and thanks will be together <3

Have you done any crafts for the holidays, yet? What were they? Share your link or ideas below!