Thanksgiving Tray

Yesterday, Molly (4) and I looked through some old magazines and cut out pictures of things we were thankful for. We cut out some fun items and some meaningful ones, like a picture of a clock for time spent with family; a picture of a fan because I'm thankful for our new air conditioner and heater; and a picture of the beach because I'm thankful for our trip to Myrtle Beach this summer! I also was sure to cut out a few pictures for Ben (1) including a toy truck, toy train, and a picture of his toddler formula because I'm sure he's thankful for his "baba!" Molly mainly cut out pictures of animals that she liked, and I thought it was so smart that she cut out the captions too so we'd remember what they were - like a crowned lemur!

Molly decided that was enough work for one day, so we put it aside to finish later. Really it didn't take too long at all so you could easily finish it all in one day. Or take a break to play like we did and make it a two day project!

The next day, I cleaned up an old wooden tv tray whose legs had broken off and used it for our canvas. Molly liked painting it with decoupage glue and then helped me arrange our pictures into a collage on the tray. We used Aleene's Instant Decoupage, which is a water based glue, sealer, and finish - ours was a matte finish. After the collage was set, I painted over it again with the decoupage to seal it, which actually dried really super fast!

Even though our tray features a giant snake for no apparent reason, I love our special Thanksgiving Tray! I'm so proud to have something that Molly and I worked on together that we can now use every year at Thanksgiving - and we re-purposed something old instead of just throwing it away!!