thankful | Planting Sequoias

For the beauty of the earth,

For the glory of the skies;

For the love which from our birth,

Over and around us lies;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

For the wonder of each hour,

Of the day and of the night;

Hill and vale and tree and flow’r,

Sun and moon, and stars of light;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love,

Brother, sister, parent, child;

Friends on Earth and friends above,

For all gentle thoughts and mild;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

For Thy church that evermore,

Lifteth holy hands above;

Off’ring up on ev’ry shore,

Her pure sacrifice of love;

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

For Thyself, best Gift Divine,

To the world so freely given,

For that great, great love of Thine,

Peace on earth and joy in heaven.

Lord of all, to Thee we raise

This, our hymn of grateful praise.

—Lyrics from Folliott Pierpoint

When I get home from work, I usually am ready for a change of pace. The last thing I want to do is sit down at a computer again.

I also can be pretty chatty after working (for the most part) silently all day, which can sometimes be a problem for Kenny.

You see, he’s a law student and has lots and lots of homework all the time. ALL THE TIME.

So last night, I had to amuse myself quietly while he studied.

For a while, I drew a picture.

Then when I realized I couldn’t blog about it because it is going to be a Christmas present, I channeled my silent craftiness in a different direction.

Little did I know that it would involve some very tricky geometry calculations. It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t know this project would involve measuring in the first place, or else I would have scrapped it entirely before I even began.

Yes, I am that bad at geometry. Why do you think I work with words? There’s a reason, folks. Math strikes fear into my heart.

First I had to cut out these triangles out of cardstock. The goal was to make it look like a 24-year-old did this project, and not a kindergartener.

To do that, I needed measurements. I couldn’t just eyeball this (if you have good eyeballing skills, I say “go for it”). The equal sides of the triangle were 6 inches long and the other side was about 3. And we all know that the definition of an isosceles triangle is “having two sides of equal length.”

Trust me when I say I had to dig deep for that definition.

Then I moved on to the fun part, the words. I just hand-lettered these, with a font I liked up on the computer in front of me.

Then I used my mad taping skills to attach some jute-like string. It took some thinking to tape the letters on in the right order while only looking at the back of them.

All of this concentration kept me quiet as a mouse. I think Kenny was pleased. Especially when I would take breaks to throw candy corn at him (silently, of course).

Then I hung it up in the spooky darkness that is 9pm in our apartment.

Kenny did make some smart-aleck-y comment about “being thankful for TV” but I still like the location I chose for our Thanksgiving banner.

In fact, I might just leave it up forever. It’s not a bad reminder for everyday, isn’t it? Not to mention that it fills that empty spot on the wall quite nicely.