I’m only three months in, but I can already tell that the first year with a baby is filled with so many monumental milestones.  Everything they do is a “first”.  It’s mind boggling to me.  From reaching for your hand to their first thanksgiving, every moment is so precious.  I, of course, want to document every.single.one.  in as many ways as possible.  I constantly am capturing digital moments (I currently have 2745 photos & 238 videos on my phone….) but I also am a sucker for the tangible items.  So I craft! & boy, are these thanksgiving crafts presh!

Footprint art has been my go to considering E is still quite young.  I just love how creative you can get with them.  For our first Thanksgiving day craft we made turkeys, pilgrims & indians, & thanksgiving cards!

I started off with the easy ones — solid color foot prints.  We did brown, red, yellow, & orange.  These would be what we used for turkey’s body & feathers.  I decided to try doing his foot prints during play time (I really struggle with this whole “timing” thing lol) which ended with paint all over E & the carpet.   BUT we prevailed.  I have learned that my success rate of getting E’s foot print where I actually want it to go is is quite low.  So I did a cardstock page full of each color, getting about 6-8 foot prints on each.  This gave me plenty to work with & that way I didn’t have to stress as much if they were smudged or too light.  I just cut out the useable ones & mod podge them into whatever design I have in mind.

So, for the turkey I used a brown foot print for the body & then used alternating colored ones for the feathers.   Added some eyes, a beak & a gobbler (or whatever that thing is called) with paint pens & viola! The cutest little 3 month old footprint turkey you ever did see.   I spruce it up with my go to super generic saying, but it’s not necessary to be that basic (just suggested :p).

Next, I moved on to the pilgrims & indians.  I really don’t know what I was thinking with these.  For whatever reason, I thought painting two different colors (with the same paint brush) on a squirming infant’s foot would lead to a successful outcome. #typical.  I somehow managed to get a few decent pilgrims using a cream colored on his heel & black on the rest of his foot.   But after that fiasco, I through the two toned indian idea out the window.  So I resorted back to brown, but stamped his foot on a paper towel before the card stock so it was a lighter, tan tone.

I mod podged them to a piece of card stock and used paint pens to add faces, hair, hats & head dresses to our little feet people!  Only appropriate to have a girl & boy of each, right?!  I spruced these up with more generic sayings, of course.   I tried to be fancy & failed miserable my first time. SO be sure to be fancy first, glue later.  I ended up having “than” & barely any room for the “ks” #momfail.  So I had to write it on a separate piece of card stock & glue it overtop of the pathetic original attempt.    I didn’t even attempt to get the spacing right with “grateful” & went ahead & did it on a separate piece as well.

Not as “perfect” as what you might find on Pinterest, but lets be honest, still adorable.

I ended up having plenty of (misfit) foot prints left over, so I decided to make some thanksgiving cards to send to the fam. A piece of card stock in to quarters to be the card “base”.  Luckily, I was able to make to pilgrim cards the same way I made the other pilgrims (^).  The turkeys were a little different, though.  I cut feathers out of construction paper, as there weren’t enough colored foot prints remaining (plus those would be way to big).  By this time, I had my spacing down a little better & added the “thankful for you” directly to each card successfully. Whoop, whoop!

Too bad no one got their cards until December since they were mailed out on Black Friday. lol, whatevs.  It’s the thought (& cuteness) that counts #amiright.

Whew! I do break things up so I don’t get overwhelmed.  I normally do footprints one day, main crafts another & the cards a final day.  Because, who really has time to do all that in one day, anyway? NOT THIS MOM. Plus, it’s an added bonus to be able to have crafting to look forward to!

It’ll be interesting to see what I do in the future… Am I going to do the same crafts over & over again each year? #lame. I better keep my creativity in gear to prevent that from happening.  By the time he’s eight we’ll be finding a way to replicate the whole thanksgiving dinner spread in craft form.

What thanksgiving crafts does your family do!? I clearly will need some inspiration before too long.