No, I’m not dead.  I’ve been working on stuff, but most of it has been a sewing project I can’t share quite yet (it is a gift for someone, but once they receive it, I’ll blog about it.)  Anywho, thought I would share a little bit of what I’ve been working on that I can show you.  I am in the midst of gathering/making my fall decorations (we are hosting Thanksgiving here).  I have a toddler who likes to craft so we’ve done a couple projects together.  Those are not sewing related, but I have started one of my sewing projects on my “list” too.

First, the main thing I have been doing is heading up our church’s Operation Christmas Child project.  We had a fun event centered on what the organization does and the impact these shoe box gifts have on a child’s life and we are collecting shoe boxes at church.  So, part of this packing a couple boxes ourselves. I chose to pack a box for a 2-4 year old girl so Dinah could help us pick out items to put in. We went shopping and got a bunch of loot to put in our box.  Now we just have to make it all fit!

If you have never heard of Operation Christmas Child or don’t know exactly what they do, I encourage you to check out their website I linked to above and see for yourself.  They are doing some wonderful things in the lives of children all over the world.  So great.

Dinah and I made some cute little hand print turkeys.  I used a paper towel roll and cut it into two pieces.  One a little bigger than the other.  Then I traced Dinah’s hand and Esther’s wee little hand to make a feather template.  From there I cut out two red, two orange and one yellow of each girl’s template.  I also cut little beaks and gobblers out of the scraps.  And then Dinah helped assemble them.  She used the glue stick (marvelous invention for toddlers) and we glued on the little turkey faces and their tail feathers.  So cute!

We also made a Thankful Tree.  I took some of my brown butcher paper and painted up a rough sketch of a tree.  Then I took some construction paper over to the church and cut out a bunch of die-cut leaves in fun fall colors.  Dinah isn’t quite grasping the idea of being thankful for things so we talked about what made us happy.  We wrote those things down on the leaves and then Dinah got to glue them onto the tree.  You will notice the pretty spacing and color distribution.  She did that all on her own.  For real.  I didn’t prompt or nudge her at all.  Looks like she has a good eye.

And then my last craft project (for now) is a little pennant banner that says “Give Thanks.”

This was super easy as well.  I got some fall themed scrapbook paper and cut out triangles and punched holes in the corners.  For the letters, I used another piece of scrapbook paper for the border and the backside of an unwanted piece of scrapbook paper for the white.  Then I just wrote in my letters.  To string it together I simply used kitchen twine.  I have lots more pennants waiting to be strung up to make a word free banner.  I just haven’t decided where to hang it yet.  That might wait until I decorate for Thanksgiving Day itself.

And the sewing project I’ve started from my to-do list is the Thanksgiving/Christmas dresses for the girls.  I am making reversible holiday dresses using the cute patches I found on etsy.

The green side will be for Thanksgiving, with a turkey patch and some red, orange and yellow rickrack trim.  This side will also have red buttons.  And the Christmas side is a tiny red and white stripe with a Christmas tree and green satin ribbon trim.  For the Christmas side I am going to experiment with using detachable ribbon bows as the buttons.

I had a pattern already for Esther’s size, but I had to enlarge it for Dinah.  I started sewing the first side together tonight and I realized that Dinah’s might have been enlarged too much.  So, I have to wait until tomorrow to try it on her and then make adjustments as needed.  (This delay is what gave me time to actually blog about all this…of course Esther woke up as soon as I sat down with the computer and has refused to go back to sleep, so things are about to wrap up as she is crawling around the house unattended.)

There you have it, my current projects.  Things still to do for Thanksgiving:
Felt Leaves for table decoration
Make lace covered votive holders
And finally, make napkins

I’ll share all of these soon!  And photos of the girls actually wearing their Fall Dresses!