Smiles Sent Saturday~November 16

This week’s a little different.  In stead of something I mailed through the Postal Service.  This is about the shoeboxes I sent through Operation Christmas Child.

Our family packed  nearly a dozen boxes and we’ll be packing 100+ more with our church.  My mom is posting on her blog Simply Shoe Boxes about our “Spur of the Moment OCC Packing Party”.  But I thought I’d share photos of the 4 I packed.
The first one was for a 2 to 4 year old boy:

I hope he likes dinosaurs!

Smiles Sent Saturday~November 9

We got the last of our Thanksgiving cards out today.  We sent a total of 15.  This is something of an increase over past years.  We are trying to send cards to all seven of my parents’ aunts.  In the past we’d just sent cards to the one or two we were closest to.  My grandmother lives with us and it always seems to brighten her day when she gets a card from one of her nieces or nephews.  So, we decided to try to do that for our aunts (now, just to be clear, we’re not leaving the uncles out, it’s just that, sadly, there are no uncles left).  I’d like to encourage my readers to think of a couple elderly family members or friends they could add to their mailing list, or even if you don’t send many holiday cards, do it for them.  They can be quite lonely, and I’m sure it would brighten their day to be remembered, especially as with their age, mail may mean more to them.  Well, now I’ll get off my soap box and share some of the envelopes I sent (and hope none of the recipients stumble across them here, first.)

A number of the envelopes this year were colored

Or brown (which I guess is a color) which I found nice as a simple rubber stamp…

…or label was enough to make it look special.

On some others plain ones I used a marker to draw either my old, standby, pumpkin…

and some fall branches.

If you’d like to see more, you can see my old posts Thanksgiving Envelopes 1 & Thanksgiving Envelopes 2

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed cause the people who receive them to smile.

Smiles Sent Saturday~November 2

Since it’s fall, and I’m working on this year’s Thanksgiving cards, and I thought I’d post some of the ones I did last year for inspiration for me now.

This one was just a colored line and some scallops.

Just some colored lines and a sticker, it’s amazing how even a small thing can really dress up an envelope.

This may be one of my favorites: my impression of a fence with cornstalk stack and a pumpkin.  I also like the fall/turkey/West Virginia stamp. I find it hard to find stamps that work well for Thanksgiving cards, but this one worked out well!

Just a simple pumpkin, thought it turned out pretty well.

And, finally this one, that I just added a little stenciled feather to.

Here’s a link if you’d like to see more of my decorated Thanksgiving envelopes.

The name “Smiles Sent Saturday” denotes my hope these things I mailed made the people who got them smile.