Thanksgiving dinner magnetic paper dolls

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's a little sad when I look around the house, and realize we go all out to decorate for Halloween and Christmas...but not Thanksgiving. I remember it being a much bigger deal when I was a kid,  so I thought I would make some festive toys/decorations for our house this year.

Felt Fold-Up Snowman Toy

 

Ping Pong Ball Thanksgiving Turkey

    

I noticed lately that we have several ping pong balls rolling around the floor of our house but no ping pong table. I think they are left over from some science kit we have long ago parted ways with so I decided to use the ping pong balls for some Thanksgiving crafting.

 I made some really cute Easter birds last spring using plastic eggs as a base. I decided to use the same technique to make some tiny turkeys for the holiday table using roving and the ping pong balls. Wool roving is this really beautiful fiber that people use for felting projects and also to spin into yarn. You can buy small amounts of it in various colors at craft stores.

Materials

• Ping pong ball
• Wool roving in a turkey color like medium or dark brown
• Tacky glue (Elmer's will not stick to the plastic.)
• Feathers
• Red yarn or embroidery floss
• Tiny yellow felt triangles for the beak
• Beads for eyes
• Red scrap of fabric or felt for the wattle
• Cardboard
• Circle of felt to cover bottom (optional)

Steps 

1. Cover the ping pong ball with pieces of wool roving. Do this by applying glue to small areas and attaching the wool, then moving around the ball until it is all covered.
2. After the wool and glue dry you will want to fill in some gaps with additional roving.
3. Now you need to make the head and neck. 
4. Form a ball and stem (the neck) out of roving and glue. Wrap red yarn around the neck to hold it together.
5.  Glue on a little piece of red felt for the wattle and the yellow felt beak pieces.
6. Glue the bead eyes on. These are so tiny I use superglue so that it will not show.
7. When everything on the turkey head is dry, attach it to the body using tacky glue. Hold it or prop it up while it dries.
8. Attach some feathers to the back of your turkey I used one each of white, brown and black. You may prefer to use feathers that are already multicolored.
9. Finally, I added a circle of purple felt-covered cardboard to the bottom of my turkey to make it look more finished and to help it stand up nicely.

Mayflower Matchbox Diorama

It is November, and Thanksgiving is approaching! 

Here is a clever gift to share for the holidays: a matchbox diorama of the 

Mayflower voyage with a ship you can move around through the waves like it is sailing to the New World.