Thankful Tree

Wow!  I guess we have been a bit busy, or I have been a bit lazy, but I have not posted in a while!!  Sorry about that! :)

So, we are well into November and Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

This is my absolute favorite time of the year!!  I love the weather and I love the holiday season that, in our home, begins on November 1st. 

In our family, November is a time that we focus on our blessings and thankfulness and December is a time that we focus on others and how we can bless them.  Boy do we have a lot to be thankful for!

For the past, I don't remember how many, years, we have made a thankful tree. 

Each year we change up what the tree looks like.  Some years we have done something on the wall, some years we have used small Christmas trees, and this year we made a stick tree.  There are probably a thousand ideas on Pinterest so find what works for your family!!

Here is what ours looks like this year:

We gathered some sticks from the backwoods, placed them in a mason jar, tied on some pretty fall ribbons and...BAM!!  Thankful tree!!

 I wanted to fill the jar with acorns, but I have not got around to gathering them yet and at this point I find it highly unlikely that I will do so!!  :)

So every morning as we all sit down to breakfast, someone from the family will name something that they are thankful for.  We even call our daughter who is off to college and she gives us her thankful item as well.

The tags I use are from Target!  I was so excited to find these in their dollar section!!  The are gold and silver trimmed with little rope hangers.  The black front of the tag is chalkboard!!  Then they had a chalk pen in the dollar section so I snatched that up as well!!

I love all of the chalk things that Target has!!

So, after we write down on one tag a day what we are thankful for, we hang it on the tree.  And then we have a visual reminder of the blessings that the Lord has bestowed upon us.  We also talk about the responsibility that those blessings bring.

We have a wide variety of tags! 

Everywhere from roaring fires in the fireplace!!!  To thankfulness for our family!

The cool thing is that after the first couple of weeks and you get past all of the obvious things, this forces everyone to really pay attention to the day and focus on blessings that sometimes sneak by us!!

There is no right or wrong way to make a family thankful tree!  How can you go wrong when you are giving thanks??!!

Have a blessed Sunday y'all!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fall on the Farm - Living Room

Mmmm..........FUN last few days with my mom, but now it is back to work!!  Goats are outside trying to bring themselves to come out of the goat shed and face the cooler weather we are having this morning!!

It is officially 48* in our neck of the woods and the animals are moving slow today!!

So while I wait for them to get moving, I thought I would share how our home is decorated for the fall.

Today I will show you the living room.  Here is an overview pic of what it looks like.

Our living room is super hard to arrange because we don't really have any walls.  You see the two sets of French doors on the one side and the other side that has the fireplace and built-in shelves.  There is also a large window on the left side of the shelves that you can't see in the picture.

The wall that the piano is on has about 5 feet of wall, the rest is floor to ceiling window. 

And the fourth side is no wall at all, just built-in bookshelves and a window seat.

So, super hard to arrange, but I love all of the windows!!

I had a lot of fun decorating the mantle for fall!!  The mantle is pretty large and the wall above it goes up forever!!  So I have a lot of room to play :)

Close-up of the wreath.

Farmer Willie, Tori and I made this super cool table out of things we found around the house!!  The frame is from an old outdoor table that the former owners left.  Then Tori pulled wood planks off of some old pallets for the top.  William cut them down, screwed them in and tah-dah....we have a table!!  I still need to apply a sealant on the top though.

This is the window that I told you about which is on the left side of the built-in shelves.  I found these two pews on the side of the road!  Can you believe that someone was going to throw them away??!!  I still have some plans to cutify them, but they work well for now!

I hope you have enjoyed checking out what we have going on over here!!

Talk to you soon!!