Gratitude Tree Advent Calendar {With download}

I often feel that Thanksgiving is not given its own due credit.  I am often guilty of jumping straight from Halloween into Christmas.  The last year or two, I've been trying to make Thanksgiving more meaningful for our family.  

I saw this Halloween advent calendar at Heartland Paper, and I was completely inspired!  My idea is using this magnet board gratitude tree as a sort of advent calendar.  At the start of the month, we will begin with a blank tree.  Each day, we will take turns as a family mentioning something we are grateful for.  As we do this, we will add a leaf onto the tree!

You can make your own gratitude tree for your family, too!  Come along with me and I'll show you how!

I already had a magnet board collecting dust, so I got to work creating the tree. I sketched a tree outline on the back of a piece of brown scrapbook paper.  I am NOT an artist so I looked at a tree picture while I did this.  

I cut out my tree and cut out several layers of "leaves" to fit the tree.  There was definitely no exact science to this.  I just cut out layers of scrapbook paper and overlapped them to create the shape of foliage.  I mod podged the leaves and tree onto the magnet board.  I also painted a layer of mod podge over the top to protect the whole tree!

Next, I created these leaves in Photoshop and cut them out.  I created 30 leaves so we could add a leaf to the tree every day during November.

I am excited to tell you that I made my first Etsy purchase!  Now I know why I stayed away from Etsy for so long... it is addicting!  I purchased 100 resin glaze drops along with 100 bottle caps at Sun and Moon craft kits.  (You definitely don't need to buy these to make your own, though.  You could use clear glass pebbles to make these, too!)  Now I attached the leaves to the resin glaze drops.

Now, I used E-6000 to attached the resin drops to the tops of the bottle caps and the magnets to the bottom of the bottle caps. Again, remember that you could use clear glass pebbles to create magnets in the same way!  It's much cheaper!  :)

Aren't those bottle cap leaf magnets lovely?!

I hung my magnet board with green ribbon.  Now I can stand back and admire it!  

But for now, we're starting with a bare tree at the beginning of November.... can I just add the first leaf to tell you how grateful I am for YOU?!  I so appreciate your kind comments and thoughts.  They really make my day!

If you wish, you can download your own set of leaves here.  I would love to see pictures if you make your own gratitude tree advent calendar!  You could even make a tree on your refrigerator and add leaf magnets every day during November.  **These leaves were made to fit my bottle caps, so you may have to resize these just a smidge smaller to fit clear glass pebbles.  Or just trim them up a bit!**

Enjoy your weekend!