A Season of Thanks and Giving

 Check out the Path of Positivity challenge blog for their newest challenge, The Power of Words: Family & Friends. They're at the midway point of the challenge...

 

Most of my neighbors know that I'm a crafter. They've also seen me pock up interesting things from the ends of driveways to upcycle or alter. Last month I created and gave mini charcuterie boards complete with cheese and a Halloween spreader/knife. 

This month I'm gifting a couple more neighbors with a portable family game center. because I was inspired by the Candyland tin to fill it with game materials. It holds a new holiday deck o cards, Yahtzee score sheets with dice and little golf pencils, and an unopened UNO dice game. I added an extra die for a game known by many names, like Foo, Farkle, etc,.

 The second game center started out as a cardboard card box shaped like a book. I decorated it to make the outside look like a real book using designer papers and a little gold paint. This box holds a deck of holiday playing cards, Yahtzee score sheets and pencils, the extra die for Foo+, and a velvet bag holding an 8-sided, dreidel-shaped "spinner" with "directions" on each side. I included a baggie of chips to use with this game.

Both game centers are also decorated with bows and a small notecard telling each family how blessed I am to have them for neighbors and friends. And of course, each family has young children to enjoy family game nights. I'll be dropping these off this coming week...

Day if the Dead card

Day of the Dead, or "Dia de los Muertos" is celebrated throughout Mexico. Many other countries around the world celebrate similar (or hybrid) versions of Day of the Dead as well, by having special days for honoring the dead.  It is a festive, joyous time of celebration, falling on November 1 and 2 of each year, coinciding with the Catholic holidays All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

I started with coloring a Rick St. Dennis image called Death on a Saturday Night with my trusty Copics. The image is one of my favorites from RSD. I made the background digitally with a paper from Rucola Designs. The moon and paper flags are free clipart from Google. In order to have the "family" appear naturally in my setting, I fussy-cut it after coloring it so it looks like it's truly part of the scene.

This is my DT make for November's challenge at Halloween & Other Occasions All Year 'round.. Besides offering Halloween all year round, as implied, each month offers challenges for each month's celebrated holidays as well. I chose Day of the Dead as my heritage may be German-Irish but my heart is Mexican...