The best of the Thanksgiving crafts for kids

I have a dream about Thanksgiving crafting with my son. It involves turning pine cones into turkeys, fashioning construction paper pilgrim hats, and using cornstalks to great effect. I also have a two-year-old who turned my dream of "taco night" into an orange meat smear on the wall yesterday, so I've pared back a bit. Tomorrow, we're going to collect a few leaves for a centerpiece and call it a day.

All the same, I stare at some of the family crafts ideas like a teenage dude stares at fancy cars. Some day, I think to myself. The truth is, here at Shine we've gotten in TONS of fantastic posts about crafts you can do with your kids, and in an effort to live vicariously through those of you whose children have outgrown the meat smear stage, I've rounded them up.

Two of our Shine users had some great suggestions using leaves. If you have a little one (like me), and a big space to make a mess in (unlike me) check out Sarah's awesome splatter paint idea . For those of you with older kids, Gina's leaf preservation seems like a nice way to honor the season for years to come. For kids who aspire to be the next Martha Stewart (I have to admit, NONE of my T-Day crafts ever looked this good growing up), Parents.com has this awesome slideshow that you can definitely glean some great ideas from. For the running-behind-on-everything parent, Babble's "Last minute crafts for kids" puts together a few different ideas that are easy on the planning, and CafeMom's "Great fall crafts ideas" has some no-hassle ideas from fellow parents.

See how giving I can be? Now, if anyone has any doable suggestions for me and the Taco-nator, I'm ready for them.