My last 2008 Christmas project

And my last craft project of the year too!



I have worked on this project on and off for 2 years. I was worried the whole time about the final washing of the work because there are so many dark colors. The longer I worked on it the longer I worried about washing it. But, it has now been washed. Now it just needs to dry, be ironed, and be framed. And I'm a week early!! (It's going to be given at a family party on the 3rd :) )

I am so so so so so so so glad to be done with this project FINALLY!!!!

Operation Gratitude and Operation Bag of Home

Right around this time last year, I started another charity with a buddy called Operation Bag of Home. The organization has floundered quite a bit over the last year. It's hard to get the little items we wanted to send in the bags. It's hard to get the handmade bags. It's hard to get the money for shipping 25 bags at a time.

Enter Operation Gratitude.

Operation Gratitude basically does what we wanted do. They are an official organization and send boxes at a time.

So, I have decided it might be easier if everyone in Operation Bag of Home sends stuff on their own to Operation Gratitude, and we keep track as a group of how much stuff we've donated to them.

Operation Gratitude does 2 different drives. They accept items from April 15 to May 15 for their Patriotic Drive and then from September 8 to early December for their Holiday Drive. You can only ship items to them during that window.

I think this will help everyone feel a sense of accomplishment and it will take the burden off any one person to send a ton of stuff at once, though I'd be happy to be a collection point locally.

So, that's what's going on there. I think this will work better than anything we tried this year. Here's to hoping.