The Heartwarming Thanksgiving Christmas Tree

Yes, I know I orbited out of the blogosphere for some time. I can't promise it won't happen again and no, I don't have a good reason for my absence. I've been spending plenty of time on the internet but have been in receiving mode rather than transmitting mode.

And my how time has flown. Alicia is now five months old and as cute as a button. Scrub that, as buttons aren't particularly cute. Cute as an ickle fluffy kitten. No, cuter. Like a baby panda bear.

Actually that panda clip is scarily appropriate. I seem to spend the majority of my time sitting around eating while Alicia chills out next to me, all smiles and scrumminess for 90% of the time and then out of the blue becomes what hubby calls a 'sound terrorist'. Bless her.

I've recently started buying the Green Parent Magazine. I love it. It's full of the type of mummies I aspire to be but know I'll never fully become...

Natural earth mothers raising wholesome, home-schooled vegan children (at least four or five of them). Baking tasty yet nutritious treats whilst wearing the baby and leading the whole family into wonderful, inspiring craft projects.

Actually, to give me my dues I do bake once or twice a week. But I realised that it's been a while since I did any crafts with Ella and one idea in this month's issue really appealed to me: creating a Thanksgiving Tree.

It was great timing as I'd already been thinking of making a tree-to-display-on-the-wall to compensate for our lack of fir tree this year. We have to do without the because my new nursing chair is now occupying the only spot in our tyeeny tiny house where a Christmas tree could possibly go.

The Green Parent suggests creating a family project-cum-ritual in homage to the American harvest festival-style celebration of Thanksgiving.

You create a tree cutout and get each family member to trace their handprints on coloured card and cut out to form the leaves of the tree. Each person then writes things they are grateful for onto their 'leaves' and decorates the paper tree. Aha I thought, with a minor adaptation that could become our paper Christmas tree. And what a nice activity to balance out the rampant consumerism that drives the season of goodwill.

After a nice roast dinner with friends (followed by my first ever pumpkin pie!), Ella and I cut a large Christmas tree shape out of gold wrapping paper and set to making paper shapes to decorate it with - handprints, baubles, holly etc all of which we inscribed with things we are grateful for. Mid-activity, Ella said "it's nice to be able to do this sort of thing with people you trust. It's nice to share our feelings." Hear hear.

We even traced Alicia's handprint and wrote 'milk' on it after also considering 'playgym' and 'cuddles'. J was busy with Alicia for most of the activity so he told us a few things to write on his behalf (one of which was my cooking. Aww!).

Due to lack of blu-tack, the Thanksgiving/Christmas tree and decorations aren't yet up on the wall. Ella's now with her dad for a few days so we'll finish the activity when she's back and post a piccie of the result. Be warned - I'm not that artistic!

The activity was a heart-warming, wonderfully bonding thing to do. I so enjoyed sprinkling the lounge floor with glitter that I've decided we should also make all of our Christmas decorations this year.

LATER NOTE: Here's our tree