Good mail month

I’ve seen some blogs that put on a report of their daily or weekly mail.  I thought I’d put on a tally for November.

My family:

Sent: Thanksgiving cards-8, Christmas Cards-42

Received:  Thanksgiving cards-4, Christmas cards-1

PERSONAL:

Sent: Thank you cards-1

Received:  Birthday Cards-6

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, it’s Thanksgiving, so I thought today would be a good time to give a wrap-up of my Thanksgiving posts.  Here is an overview and links to my Thanksgiving Cards and the envelopes I decorated with the computer, markers, or watercolor.  Here you can see my Thanksgiving Hutch.  And here you can see my fall photo craft/tree. 

I’d also like to take a chance to reflect all that I have to be thankful for.  As I mentioned earlier this year on Memorial Day, I’m very thankful for the freedoms I have in this country.  Thanksgiving is a festival that is around the end of harvest, and I’m thankful that, unlike so many in the world, I have plenty to eat, a safe place to live, and plenty of people to love and be loved by.  I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend. 

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I’m linking up to:

Thanksgiving cards

Unlike last year when we were able to make the trip back to Ohio for Thanksgiving,  and unlike the year before, we don’t have friends whose family was also out of state to come for dinner, so it’s just us this year. So, our visiting has been done via cards.  I’ve found that stores don’t seem to stock many Thanksgiving cards, so most of these are ones I picked up another year when I found them so as to have them on hand.  I decorated a number of the envelopes, you can see my posts on the ones I decorated with: the computer, watercolors, and markers.

While doing these cards I found that there aren’t really any good stamps to use for Thanksgiving cards.  A couple years ago they had these Thanksgiving stamps from the US Postal Service. I bought a sheet and used it for a year or two, but I used them up, (I was thinking the cost

Computer Envelopes

Well, I have for some time preferred doing art-type things on the computer, but lately I have been doing envelopes by hand.  Well, for one of the envelopes for our Thanksgiving cards I went back to the computer.  You can see a bit of the card there, and it just didn’t have anything to match easily by hand, so I went with the computer, I decided to try to match the plaid boarder.  I went into Microsoft ® PowerPoint ®. I made rectangles in shapes that were the right color (& made the larger ones transparent to mimic the weave), then just grouped and copied part of it up and down the main stripes.  Then I saved the finished boarder as a picture and put it into Microsoft ® Publisher ®.  I had trouble getting my printer to print on the envelope the right size, until I realized that it was 8 1/2 inches wide, so then I just treated it like a whole sheet of paper on the computer and feed the envelope trough sideways (the longest way parallel to the printer instead of perpendicular) and made sure the embellishment was on the part of the paper that printed first. I think it turned out quite well.

Watercolor envelopes

So, I decided to try something new for these envelopes.  I found this site about decorated envelopes, and I saw the envelopes from Bride design and was inspired to try watercolors. Now, I’m not very good at painting since I’m no where near as gifted as these people are, but I thought I’d try.  I had been going through some of my old craft stuff and came across my watercolors & brushes from childhood, the cards had watercolors on their covers, plus I was sending them to my aunts, and what are aunts for if not to receive one’s attempts at painting?   After a lot of experimenting I decided on doing a leaf & a heart on the envelopes to match the cards.  I didn’t try the acorn and couldn’t get my trees to look the way I liked.  Now, I didn’t really freehand either of these things here’s how I did it and you can too.  One hint, practice on

Decorating envelopes with markers

I like to decorate envelopes, when possible to match the cards.  This Thanksgiving I’m trying different mediums.  This is about the ones I used magic markers on.  

 

Off they go…

Well, we’ve sent our shoeboxes off to Operation Christmas Child again this year.  This is a program of Samaritan’s Purse where people in a number of countries fill shoeboxes with various items like toys, school supplies, candy, hygiene supplies, etc. then they send them to needy children worldwide. I believe it started in the early 90’s in response the Bosnian crisis.  Over the years these shoeboxes have brightened the Christmases of a number of children all around the world who otherwise wouldn’t have had any other presents or celebrations in hospitals, orphanages, refugee camps, and other dreary spots around the world.  Over the years my family’s boxes have gone to eastern Europe and Africa (that we know of either from letters, or through their

Baseball envelopes

If you read my blog, you know that recently I’ve gotten into decorating many of my envelopes I mail out.  Well, some of these designs are quite feminine, so here is a more sporty/masculine alternative: baseball envelopes.  On a recent trip to Ohio I went to a baseball game with family, so that seemed to be a good theme for the cards containing photos of the trip, plus I had some baseball stamps.  Here is a completed envelope: