It has been a year now since I created our first seasonal family bucket list. I love making the bucket lists each season because it really helps us focus our family time. As Elias gets older, we’ll have him give his input on what he wants to go on the bucket list. For now, I’ve gotten some ideas online, come up with some on my own, and used some tried and true fall activities. We make sure we have some time for relaxing too.
Since it has been a year since our first bucket list, I wanted to change things up a bit. Last year, each season, I made a checklist of sorts, printed it out, put it in a frame, and displayed in our home. We checked off completed activities with a dry erase marker. That was a lot of fun, and I probably could have done that forever. But I didn’t want to get stuck in a rut. Part of the fun of the bucket list is that it gets us to try new things…right? So I thought for a long while about how to present our fall 2012 bucket list. I decided to make a leaf garland. The leaf garland is displayed in a central place in our home. Each time we complete an activity, we’ll remove the corresponding leaf from the garland and post it on the window.
Here’s how we did it:
First, I searched online for images of leaf templates. I chose a maple, oak, aspen, poplar, and one other to get some variety. Then, I traced the templates onto a sheet of thick poster board.
Next, I cut out the leaves, and instituted family art night! I got out the paints, the brushes, the plastic to cover our carpet, and gathered my family. Here is our set up:
Then we painted away. My son, being 23 months immensely enjoyed the activity. I wondered if we’d have to paint the leaves in shifts (there were 30 of them), but he wanted to paint them all. The best part was that the more the paint smeared and mixed, the better they looked, so Elias created some very beautiful looking leaves. My husband and I joined in the fun and made a few as well.
Then we set the leaves out to dry. They curled a bit at first, but mostly flattened themselves out as they dried.
The next day, I cut out each item on our bucket list, and glued it to the back of a leaf. I used a hole punch to create a way to hang my leaves.
Finally, I used twine to hang my leaves as a garland, and put it up on our wall! I used the extra leaves to decorate the remaining wall space, and made a “title” for our bucket list. Overall I’m very happy with it. It is not as elegant as I had envisioned, but it was made partially by a one year old. It is a family bucket list and that’s more important to me than elegance. Here is a close up of our bucket list garland:
Curious what is on our bucket list? Here is what is on the back of all those leaves:
- Collect leaves, preserve them, and send some to our sponsored children
- Fill a cornucopia with things we are thankful for and display it in our home
- Go apple picking!
- Visit a pumpkin patch
- Make carmel apples. If possible, use homemade caramel
- Go on a walk at the nature park
- Celebrate the 11th anniversary of our first date
- Make pine cone turkeys
- Have an autumn themed read-a-thon at a local park
- Find out the story behind the first pardoning of a white house turkey
- Make leaf coasters
- Go on a hayride
- Make fall cookies
- Carve pumpkins
- Dance to the monster mash
- Watch “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown” together as a family
- Watch “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” together as a family
- Go Trick-or-Treating
- Watch a football game while eating homemade chili
- Make leaf magnets
It’s looking to be a great fall for us! Anyone have a good homemade chili recipe?