A Goofy Thanksgiving

My family, the Grow Girls, went to Goofy's Kitchen for Thaksgiving dinner. Goofy's Kitchen is one of the restaurants in the Disneyland Hotel.

In the Hotel entrance

I highly recommend all of the Disneyland restaurants. The food is great and several fun characters visit with you at your table. We saw Alladin, Dale, Goofy, Donald, Minnie, Briar Bear, and some other bear.

I only took pictures of the dessert station items but I will tell you that the dinner was great. Lots of choices for kids and grown-ups. The good news is that it's all you can eat.Only Disney can get away with serving gummy bears with Thanksgiving dinner

Pecan Pies

Mini Pumpkin Pies

There were some really cool breads shaped like turkeys and alligators. I have no idea why an alligator is at a Thanksgiving spread but, why not?

I kid you not. This was my dessert plate. Not pictured is my caramel nutella tart and rice Krispie treat. And, there were lots of desserts that I left alone like the ice cream sundae bar, the fruit cobbler, jello, brownies, and cookies.

The Rice Kristie treats were very colorful with just a hint of white chocolate.

Yummy Rice Krispie Treats

Here is the niece with Goofy himself.

She's getting to that age where she gets embarrassed taking pictures with the characters.
Happy Thanksgiving!

A Simple Love Card

During the Operation Write Home Be My Valentine blog hop, I realized that I don't have a lot of Valentine-y sentiments. And, to add incident to injury, my printer was acting up on my this weekend so I couldn't do the digi thing either. Sheesh. Thus, out of desperation, I had to go to my stash for lovey embellishments.

I made this card from papers, ribbon and a metal tag that I've been hoarding for just the right time. I think that our troops and their loved ones deserve the best so it was fun to layer all the treasures together.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today. What are you hoarding?

Miss You Cards

I made several Valentine cards this weekend for Operation Write Home. My go-to theme seemed to be "miss you" since I'm sure so many of our troops miss their families. Here are three very different cards made with the same digital sentiment.

Teresa Collins and BoBunny paper, Fiskars border punch, ribbon

Prima flowers, buttons and brads

 

Thank you for stopping by my blog today. I'd love to know your go-to sentiment.

More Teresa Collins paper, Primas, brads and an eyelet

We have a Blog Candy Winner

Thank you to everyone who stopped by my blog and left a comment. You are so sweet. However, without further adieu, the random winner of the Valentine stamp set is:

K. Joy from Splashes of Joy and the artist behind K n' K Designs. Check her out, she creates the cutest digital images. I am a sucker for dog images.

Valentines for Veterans

I am excited to be a part of the Operation Write Home Be My Valentine Bloghop. So, you may be asking yourself, "why are those crazy card ladies making Valentine cards in November?" Well, the Christmas deadline has passed so we are working on our next deadline, Valentine's Day, January 7th.

But, we have a special incentive to get them in earlier. Archway cookies is matching the Valentine cards received by our shippers by December 1 with cookies for our troops. Click here for the details. So cool!

Back to the hop. I made a little card to start off my weekend of Valentine's Day card making.

I went a little crazy with the patterned paper but I like how it turned out. I love the blue and black check paper from Teresa Collins. I can pretty much add it to every card I make a be totally happy and justified about it. Hopefully a soldier will love to send it to his wife and she will love to get something homemade from her hubby who is serving far away on Valentine's Day.

Here is another view.

So, do you want some sweets? I'm offering some blog candy today. All you need to do is comment below about anything, the troops, Valentine's Day, whatever. I'll draw a random winner from all those who comment by Monday at 8 p.m (California time) November 22. If you don't have a blog, leave a way for me to track you down.

Thanks for visiting. Please continue along the bloghop by visiting the very talented cardmaker, Patti at What are you Iinking?  And, if you are in the creative mood and love our troops, please make some Valentine's Day cards for OWH. 

Also, since it is Veteran's weekend,  I wrote a blog post about sending care packages to our troops. Check it out.

How to Send Packages to the Troops

With U.S. Veterans Day just around the corner, I wanted to share with you some tips for sending packages to our troops. Our troops love to receive mail, especially packages from home. When sending treats overseas, some of the rules can be a little tricky. I'm going to try to make it a little easier.

My cousin's Air Force buddies

What to send:

The most important thing we can send our troops is a letter of encouragement. Other than that, they love to receive fun things from home like books, dvds, magazines, snacks, video games, socks, toiletries, puzzle books, and other thoughtful gifts.

Our local library has a wonderful used books sale and I am one of their best customers. :) It's a great way to support our library and our troops.




MREs can be pretty yucky. Some troops love condiment packets like hot sauce to kick it up a notch.

Troops love easy on-the-go bars, candy, packaged cookies, beef jerky, instant items and drink packets.

What not to send to the middle east:

Obscene articles (prints, paintings, cards, films, videotapes, etc).
Any matter depicting nude or seminude persons or nonauthorized political materials.
Bulk quantities of religious materials contrary to the Islamic faith.
Pork or pork by-products
Chocolate (it melts) send hard candies instead

Where to send it:
There are several really great organizations that help you connect with soldiers. Each is organized in a different way so be sure to read their FAQs first. Here are a few reputable organizations:
Books for Soldiers (I've been a volunteer for a few years and love this group)
Any Soldier
Operation Gratitude
Soldier's Angels

How to send it:

The USPS has some great packaging solutions just for our troops and lots of tips on their website. You can pick them boxes and envies at the post office or do what I do and order them for free online and have them dropped off at your home. There are Priority Mail envies for smaller items.

And, my favorite for shipping books and heavy items, the Priority Mail Flat Rate box.

This is an ongoing project for me. I love it! If you have any tips or questions, please share. I'll try and update this post as new info comes in.

Thanks for stopping by :)