On Giving Thanks

There are already some houses with Christmas decorations up around here.

Dining light

Now, you know how much I LOVE Christmas and all that goes with it...but it seems like Thanksgiving gets more and more overlooked every year.

Well, I'm not even hosting Thanksgiving at my house this year (gasp...I KNOW! This is the first year in probably a decade that I haven't hosted Thanksgiving) but I couldn't let the one holiday that focuses on gratitude go unrecognized in my house. Okay, I can hear some of you saying that Thanksgiving is about eating an insane amount too. And I guess it means watching football games to some people, but certainly not to me! :-)

But hopefully we can all sit back and recognize all of the incredible blessings in our lives, regardless of the (often silent and private) struggles we all try to work our way through. None of us are starving to death, we probably all have roofs over our heads and somebody to call family or at least friend. Any of us who have the time and the means to sit around and read eachother's blogs and pursue things like decorating, design, and crafts are so very blessed. Billions of people in this world do not enjoy even the most basic of earthly comforts, and millions of orphaned/abandoned children in the world do not have a single soul to call family. They have no sense of belonging, no sense of being loved and cared for. It rips my heart out.

So yes, I have a LOT to be grateful for. Sometimes I feel guilty for pursuing such "frivolous" things as, well, pretty much everything you see on this blog! I wonder if I'm using my time wisely. But I also know that the talents that I possess are from God and I'm supposed to develop them and use them to accomplish good. Creating a beautiful environment is important to me, it feeds my soul and brings me joy - I just need to be careful about balance, and I need to make sure I'm giving back to others.

Which is why this is as far as I got on the fabulous new quilt I was planning to make and hang on my Wall O' Plates wall instead of the plates that you see. It'll have to wait until next year, because I'm Mommy to 3 beautiful kiddos and I'm doing my best to help those nearly invisible, so very fragile Bulgarian orphans on the other side of the world.

I still had time to "Thanksgiving-ify" my china cabinet a little bit. :-)

Speaking of my kids, here they are being swallowed up by a giant, child-eating pile of leaves!

They don't seem to mind.

Can you believe that all of these leaves came from our small front yard?! When it's Fall here, it is REALLY Fall! I love it.

You've heard of Snow Angels, but what about Leaf Angels? Now you have.

Okay, these pictures have nothing to do with Autumn or Thanksgiving...I just wanted to show you the skirt I made Hazel recently - I've had that fabric for at least a year, and have procrastinated big time. This week I've been back into Skirt-Making-Mode due to birthday party gifts and fun things for the cousins. Hazel was feeling left out, so I squeezed this project in. Plus a matching skirt to the one she was bringing to her little friend's birthday party, which I don't have pics of. Yes, she's spoiled...but that's what babies of the family are for, right? :-)

Raaawwrrrr...she's a dinosaur...or a tiger....or something! You can tell she doesn't have any idea how cute she is, can't you?

One more thing I wanted to give you a sneak peek of...another quilt! I'm planning on making a downloadable pattern for this one - I just haven't had time yet, imagine that. Hopefully in the next week or two. I'm also ALMOST done with my studio! Which means that, after about a year's time, I'll finally be able to take a bunch of pictures and show you the big dramatic Before and Afters. Woohoo! Very exciting stuff.