Today has been an amazingly wonderful day. It started off with some gift opening (which included a terrific raffle prize from Gather Here), and then moved to pumpkin waffles, cooked eggnog french toast style. Victor got some Dog Nog, which made him so interested in drinking his water that he had a little accident. I made this trifle, using the Barefoot Contessa red velvet cupcake mix. I also cooked a few sides: garden pea risotto, mashed potatoes and these awesome biscuits from Smitten Kitchen (pictures of those tomorrow, because the excess was full of hilarity).
I didn't really give my husband much, but this year was the first year I did most of my gifting from Etsy. Soap for my MIL, lip balm, and some geeky things for my husband. While I had some good gift giving, my best was still this.
A simple envelope style pillow using a couple of tutorials (Kaufman fabric, because I'm not smart enough to write down what the fabric is when I buy it). The monkey is done in reverse applique, and while there are a number of great tutorials (like this one), I did something a bit different.
I free hand drew a monkey similar to the ones in the fabric on a piece of white felt and then cut the felt out as a template. I then outlined the felt on the blue fabric and cut out the monkey in the blue fabric. A bit of handsewing, backstitch actually, around the monkey and to secure the fabric and then I used this awesome floss I have from almost 2 million years ago to do a whip stitch around the edges to protect the fabric from fraying. The hand work was what took the most time. I finished the pillow early Christmas morning (1am-ish) on the sewing machine. While I am not the best at sewing I'm proud of this pillow and my husband seems to really love it too. Yeah!
I'm glad that I have tomorrow off. It will be time for some relaxing, sitting around, and cleaning up the mess from today.
