Smiles Sent Saturday~Thanksgiving Care Package~November 22, 2014

My cousin is currently serving in the armed forces, so I sent him a care package for Thanksgiving (which is not only my favorite holiday, but also the one I find hardest to not be with family).  I had been seeing about decorating the inside of the box, so decided to give it a try.  I got some colored paper , old magazines, ads, and catalogs to try to line it with.  I just picked the pictures I liked the look of, and cut them down to the size to fit/show well. I used glue sticks (although I think I may try something else next time, but it did okay)  to attach them.  The top edges I used washi tape to edge the tops to secure it, but it also gave a nice finishing touch.  Then, as they didn't reach the bottom on all sides I lined the bottom with yellow printer pages held in place with packing tape.  It looked better, and was easier to do than I expected!

I filed it with a container of pumpkin cookies from a recipe I found among some of my great-grandmother's recipes that he'd liked before.  A copy of a card game I'd gotten and liked earlier this year.  Then went to the store and tried to find items that mirrored a Thanksgiving dinner:

To topped it off with a card I made from an image I found at 521 Lake Street of a sailor home for Thanksgiving that I thought was just too cool

If you'd like toe see the Thanksgiving box I sent a couple years ago, my mom blogged about it with photos here:  Shoe Boxes for Sailors: Thanksgiving Dinner in a Shoe Box

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

Military Envelope

I was getting some Veterans Day cards together to send to some family and friends and was trying to figure out how to decorate the envelopes (if at all).  While the image on one of the cards included dog tags, and it hit me that would be a GREAT decoration to use, so I got on Microsoft Office Publisher and made this template from some shapes:

Then I just printed it off, traced it with a pencil, and went over it with a silver marker, and added some dots for the chain and this is how it turned out: