It's Thanksgiving Time ... Are you Ready?

It's almost time to roast that bird, mash those potatoes, make cornbread dressing and gravy plus a pie or two !

We LOVE Thanksgiving in our family.  It is traditionally the time we all get together and just enjoy a great communal meal and each other's company. To catch  up on what we have all been doing.  To share and laugh.  There is a lot of talking and laughing when we all get together that is for sure !!!!

We have 26 people gathering together this year from my hubby's side of the family.  We can hardly wait to see everyone!  It's been a while since we were all together.

Part of Thanksgiving is also about giving Thanks for all that we have been given.  We are reminded of the hardships and sharing by the pilgrims and indians on that first Thanksgiving in America. And of our own hardships and sharings since.

Our holiday table decorations always reflect those pilgrims and indians.

This year I made some candle decorations for 4 of the tables with inspirational words.

I used the Cricut Lacy Labels and Thanksgiving carts. 

My granddaughter and I also made boy and girl pilgrim napkin ring holders for everyone.

She even wrote "Give Thanks" on each one.   So adorable !

And last year I had made a "Give THANKS" Banner which we used on the

 Fireplace Mantle in the family room this year.

I will be doing a lot of cooking and cleaning in preparation for everyone's arrival later this week and may not blog more until next week, so let me take this chance to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and to enjoy those you gather around your table.

Thank You...

A simple Thank You sometimes doesn't seem enough, does it? How about a card to go along with it.

This week the challenge on the Cricut Circle Blog was to make a thank you card using an unusal color combination of magenta, apricot, deep olive and golden yellow. These colors are lovely together but hard to photograph..even in my photo light box I had trouble.

I used my cuttlebug and swiss dot embossing folder to give additional texture to the coordinations yellow cardstock and then I sanded the dots to expose the slight white underneath.  The felt hearts were cut with my cuttlebug as well.  I had an adorable stick pin with just the right color of magenta bird that fit in perfectly.  The pretty font for "Thank You" came from the Thanksgiving Seasonal Cricut Cartridge.

So without further ado....thank you blog readers for following me.  I have a lot of projects I am finishing up for the holidays and will be posting those for inspiration soon. 

Flat Stanley's Adventure with the O'Neal Family

We had a house guest the month of October.  He wasn't your typical house guest...he came folded up in an envelop and didn't take up much room.  The good news was he enjoyed whatever we were doing and was very neat.  Yes, you guessed it.  We played host to Flat Stanley...a beloved character in the children's books.  In the story, Flat Stanley had a bullentin board fall on him and flattens him.  He mails himself around the world to have adventures that are documented in the books. How fun is that?!!

One of my MB friends' has a daughter who teaches the Second Grade. The kids in their class sent a Flat Stanley they had colored to a family to host for the month of October.  We were responsible for taking Flat Stanley around our city or wherever we were going.  We needed to send a few post cards to the child, a souvenir or two and some pictures of Flat Stanley when we returned him.  Well you know since I am a scrapbooker, of course I made a scrapbook of Flat Stanley's adventurers with us for the child to enjoy.

Since Bianca is also in the Second Grade knew exactly who Flat Stanley was and was very happy to help me host Flat Stanley in Houston.  We were also able to take Flat Stanley on our recent trip to Boston.  I thought it was a great opportunity to show Flat Stanley is such an important historical city about our country.

Here are a few pictures of the book I made for the child of Flat Stanley's trip with us. The book has a lot of pockets, tags and flip up pages for added fun.

In Houston we took Flat Stanley to our Zoo and to lunch for burgers.

Flat Stanley made it here in time for us to take him to Boston for vacation.

There are so many transportation options in Boston area, we captured a lot of those.

And of course, in Boston you have to do the Freedom Trail

We saw all the historical sites on the Freedom Trail

And we really enjoyed the cooler fall weather and the gorgeous fall colors.

They have an amazing Aquarium in Boston that we visited.

The Giant Sea Turtle and all the Penguins were our favorites.

As you can see, we had a great time in Boston with Flat Stanley

We got back to Houston in time for Flat Stanley to Trick or Treat with Bianca and friends.  

I even made him a Ghost Costume to wear.

 At the Old State House I bought this children's book about the

American Revolution to send to the class along with the scrapbook.

Plus of course I sent a few other goodies we gathered on our travel to Boston.

We will miss Flat Stanley at our house.  I almost feel like we are going through the empty nest syndrome again :)   

Happy Fall Ya'll

Well, even though it is still in the mid 70's here this week, they say we will finally get some cooler weather later in the week.  Keeping fingers crossed for that.  Would love to get a fire going in the fire pit in the backyard and make Smores over the weekend!  Doesn't that sound good?

Last week DH and I were in Boston on vacation.  All I can say is WOW....Boston is an awesome city!  We even spent 1 day in Salem too during Halloween week.  I need to get all the the photos organized before posting but I wanted to post some pictures I took in the Public Gardens (oldest public park in the USA).  The fall colors of the trees were breath taking, particularly for us Houstonians who don't get to enjoy fall leaves too much .

Oh Fall, what a gorgeous display you put on for us all !