How to Create Your Own Gratitude Shadow Box to Celebrate the Season of Giving!

Develop an attitude of gratitude starting with you -- you are worth it! Take a moment right now and look at yourself -- your hands, your feet, and your face -- with the same kind of admiration you might bestow on one of the most precious sculptures in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

Think about this --you are irreplaceable, which makes you priceless.

Many of you may already have gratitude journals that you keep daily or write in weekly. Some of you are aware of the power of keeping a list of things you are grateful for, and some vision board creators even add their updated gratefulness lists to their current vision boards.

But there is great power in creating a gratitude board for your life and doing it along with your family. It's especially appropriate at this time of the year.

Great post-Thanksgiving weekend family activity!
So start now.

What better way to fight the doldrums of post-Thankgiving weekend! Gather the family together for a few quiet hours and create a GRATITUDE SHADOW BOX, a fun variation on a classic vision board!

Begin by locating an old shadowbox in your garage or one that you can find on sale at your local craft or picture frame store.

Here's how to create your family masterpiece in 5 easy steps:

1) Clean out the old shadowbox. Consider spray painting it with a metallic gold or silver color if it needs to be freshened up. If you want to get fancy, you can cut different fabric squares to fit the background of each section of the box. Consider velvet for one and gingham for another or use a bit of colored wrapping paper in another.

2) Gather up the goodies: see what you have from Thanksgiving dinner or that trip to the relatives. Go ahead and put that great pix of the Turkey in the center! Add a broach grandma gave you that lost its pin or include Grandpa's old tie-tack. Planning a holiday trip to Hawaii, then add a little pink drink umbrella! Did one of your daughter's hair barette's lose a rhinestone, add it in a square for her.

3) Be sure to spice it up with embellishments. Add the first holiday stamp to come in the mail. Place a dried flower from that table arrangement in a special corner. Consider cutting up old holiday cards you may find as you unpack the boxes from the attic. Did the baby get her first haircut? A lock of golden hair is a charming addition. Is Jane wearing lipstick for the first time this holiday season. Have her save that pink lip print forever on a dainty corner of a napkin

4) Let each family member arrange one of the squares in the shadowbox and join together to craft any extra sections

5) Last but not least, make a list of what your family is grateful for and post it on the back of the shadowbox along with the date and signatures. Always fun to look at year after year after year

Post your comments here about what you'd put into your own Gratitude Shadow box.

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