A Sweet Thanksgiving

While at my sewing workshop in NYC, I had the pleasure of meeting Melissa Sweet (who was another workshopper).  She just published a children's book called, Balloons Over Broadway.  The book is about Tony Sarg, the puppeteer who put balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

This year Macy's used her book as the theme for the parade and her artwork was featured in all of the advertising for the parade.  One evening after dinner a few of us, including Melissa, decided to walk over to Macy's to see if we could find the advertisements for the parade so she could have some.

Here are Melissa (center) and Liesl Gibson (right) asking the woman in the center where we could find the advertisements and special holiday shopping bags.  (It was shocking how difficult it was to find these two things.)

Here is Melissa holding up her book next to the ONE advertisement that we found in the store.

I bought the book and had her sign it.  

The kids love the book.  The artwork is so charming and it's really fun to read about how the balloons came to be in the Thanksgiving day parade.  And after reading such a lovely book, the kids and I decided that we should watch the parade on Thursday morning.  It was very enjoyable.  The kids enjoyed watching all of the balloons and hearing about how much they weigh and how big they are.  (We switched over to the Chicago parade during commercials to make it even more enjoyable!)

I knew that while Melissa was in NYC she was also taping a segment for the Martha Stewart show featuring a craft that could be done for the holidays.  The kids and I searched it out and made our own balloon craft.  We also found this activity kit that goes along with the book.  So after the parade was over, and the turkey was in the oven we started crafting.  (I think this may be a new holiday tradition at our house.)

Here are our balloon parade floats(sans wheels):

 Here are some finger puppets that Woof-woof made:

Here is a dragon puppet that I colored:

 And Sweetie is modeling a mask that The Little One and I colored together.

It was really fun to do these things together.

And as a parting shot, here is a picture that I took of Macy's my last evening in NYC.

They have a monopoly on Christmas magic.