Fall Impressions: Week 2

This idea has been all around the web lately, and in fact, last week Karla shared with us her beautiful Thanksgiving Tree.  I don’t remember doing anything like this as a child, so this idea fascinates me – having the chance to physically be able to write down and see everything you are thankful for – everything that the Lord has done for you.

We are working with the letter J this week, and “jar” begins with J… so we made our very own “Joy Jar.”

Creating it was very simple – I didn’t think things would stick very well to a glass jar, so I printed the words “Joy Jar” onto vellum and made a little slipcover for the jar for us to glue things onto.  I had found some fall confetti that I thought would be so pretty on the jar, so we got started with our gluesticks…

As we were gluing shiny turkeys, leaves, and acorns to the jar, I started asking EJ what he was thankful for. He’s been telling us for the past week that he is thankful for his Uncle Drew, so he’s been on the right track… we talked about other family members and his friends. Daddy added that he was thankful for the food God gives us, and the warm house we have… it was a really nice time of sharing that I hope carries on through the years.

We added the confetti to the strips of paper, too, and I plan on asking anyone who comes over this season to write down some things they are thankful for and add them to our jar.

I will add that this is not how I wanted the jar to look.  I had confetti all over the top of the jar, too, and it looked like a crown of leaves!  There was a lot more confetti all over it, too… all of this I added after EJ lost interest and wandered off.  When he came back, he did not like the way I decorated the jar.  He removed all the confetti from the top and a lot from the sides.  And truth be told, this even happened one more time – I decorated it the way I wanted it again, and then I put it up on the counter so EJ couldn’t reach it.  But when he saw it, he started crying and wanted to “fix” the jar again.  As I was ready to stand my ground, my husband asked me if I did this with EJ just for this blog, or if I did it for him.  Thank you, my love, for reminding me why I really did this activity with EJ, and for helping return the joy to our family.

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