Ahhhhh Fall...is there anything more soothing and romantic than watching the trees change colors?  I know you frequently hear this from folks who, like I am, are East Coast transplants, but the one major thing that San Francisco lacks is four seasons.  Sure we have our own seasons: Summer means fog, Fall means Indian Summer, Winter (hopefully) means rain, and Spring, is just sort of a mixture of all three. But nothing beats an East Coast fall when the trees turn orange, yellow, and brown.  There's just something about those cascading leaves sashaying like kites in the breeze as they gently drift to earth that makes my heart swoon.

I'm sure this is the reason I was so drawn to i Heart Crafty Things 2012 post.  

Rachel has created an absolutely adorable craft that not only tugs at my nostalgic heart string but also gets my texture and recycle heart beat racing.  Using a paper bag for the tree trunk and puzzle pieces for the leaves is just a fabulous idea.  Now, Rachel has chosen to paint her puzzle pieces, but, I think it would be fun to make this a sorting project as well.  I think it would be a great challenge for little ones to place the various puzzle pieces into brown, yellow, orange, red and black piles, and then use those to build the tree.  Painting the pieces would certainly give one uniformity though, and who doesn't like to paint?  Basically, it's up to you whichever you prefer, both will give you stunning effects, I'm sure.

Rachel doesn't break down the craft into too many steps, but it's pretty obvious how she's created the tree.  You may have to help little hands with the trunk, but once that's in place it should be pretty easy for younguns to take over.  

If you are a school teacher I think these would make an amazing classroom display.  I'm just imagining all the variations of trees and numbers of leaves.  I'm almost certain there would be that one tree with that one lone leaf hanging on for dear life, created of course by the "minimalist" child in the class.

I do hope you'll pop on over to Rachel's site  and check out not only this, but her other fun paper projects.  Her's is a site you can definitely "Fall" for.