Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.  I enjoy getting together with family and taking time to reflect on all of God’s blessing.

About ten years ago (before I had kids or was even married) I came up with this idea to make a Thanksgiving keepsake book and for some reason the idea just never went away.  Needles to say, now that Henry is celebrating his first Thanksgiving I was excited to finally put this little book together.The idea of making hand print turkeys is certainly not new.  Even the idea of writing something you are thankful for on each of the fingers is not new.  I just thought it would be neat to make a book out the turkeys. Each year you can look back and see how much the child’s hand has grown and be reminded of what they were thankful for in previous years.

Henry can’t talk, but if he could I’m sure this is what he would say he was thankful for. 🙂This book is easy to put together.  Here is what you will need:

• Colored card stock
• Ruler
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Tape or glue
• Paint and paintbrush
• Fine tip marker or pen
• Free printable (see below)

1. Select a variety of fall colored 8.5″ x 11″ card stock.  For my book I used 11 sheets of card stock.

2. To make your book square, measure 8.5″ on each of the 11″ sides of the paper and make a mark.  Then use the ruler to draw a straight line connecting your two marks.

3. Cut along the line you drew and repeat the process for all of your pages.  If you happen to have a paper cutter you will save yourself some time.

4. Download the free printable below, cut the image out and taped it on the cover using double sided tape.  If you aren’t going to laminate your book you could glue your image to the cover instead.

5. Take all of the pages to a copy center.  They can laminate the front and back cover for you and then spiral bind the pages together.

6. Now it’s time to capture your child’s hand print.  If you have a squirmy little one, like my 11 month old, this is the hardest step of the whole project.  If he were a little older I would have painted his hand with the white paint and had him press his hand on the page.  But I knew there was no way that was going to happen so instead I traced his hand on the paper with a pencil and painted in the outline with white paint.

7. Depending on the age of your child, either you or your child can write down something they are thankful for on each of the five fingers using a fine tip marker or a pen.  To add the finishing touches to your turkey you can draw on an eye, beak, wattle and feet.

8.  Sit back and admire your handwork!

The following image is the free printable for this project.  I included two options for you.  You can go with the first options and write your child’s name in the top part or you can use the second one and just have the word Thanksgiving.  To download the printable right click on the image and save the image to your computer.