I am so glad B comes home tomorrow from his training in New York. I am hoping to get a lot more done with him home, although I'm not entirely certain that will be the case. At least I can take a blanket with me to the airport to knot in the car on the way home.

Speaking of B coming home, instead of working on any Christmas crafts tonight, I worked on cleaning up the house a little and spent a rather lengthy time talking to him on the phone. He talked to the baby on the phone as well and amazingly, she actually rambled on and on. Usually she clams up on the phone, but tonight the child was just out of control. She's so cute right now with all of her new words, and it was very obvious she was excited to talk to her daddy.

B will be frustrated to see many of my craft supplies are sitting in boxes in the guest room, but I don't want to put them in the closet just yet. I really would like to get some sort of storage system going in the closet other than huge boxes, but that will have to wait for a bit. Perhaps after the new year I'll make a trip to the Container Store and get my supplies organized again. I'll probably put the boxes in the closet sometime this weekend, though. I think I am going to try to use the boxes as a gift wrapping surface, but I'm not sure that will work. It's certainly worth a shot.

I worked on the ornaments last night. The blankets are still staring at me, sitting in a pile on my sofa waiting to be knotted. I took advantage of Sophie being asleep last night and sewed up all of the ornaments so they're ready to be stuffed. Out of all the crafts I have ever done, holiday crafts are always my favorite, and out of the holiday crafts, ornaments rank at the top (I seriously wish I had pictures of all the ornaments I've made throughout the years - I should ask my sisters for pictures of all the ornaments I've made for them). That's probably how they managed to get worked on before the paper mache boxes and the blankets, although I don't have sealer for the decoupage yet, so that can wait another day or two.

I sewed three sets of three ornaments each. I'll take pictures of all the ornaments oncethey're finished, but for now I focused on the Christmas tree. These are some of the easiest ornaments I've ever made (usually I use the blanket stitch around the edges or some other hand-sewn detail), and the first ornaments I've ever made with the sewing machine. I wish I'd made them a wee bit larger but I don't think they'd look good on the tree if they were too big. As it is, this ornament was probably my smallest at roughly 1"x3".

I'm not terribly fond of the rickrack I used for the Christmas tree hanger, but what's done is done. Since this is the first time I'd ever sewn anything like this and I wasn't using any sort of pattern, it took me a few minutes to figure out how to get the rickrack so it was facing the right direction to work as a hanger when I was done. I took the time to pin down the rickrack and then pin the two fabric pieces together (the green is felt, the Christmas tree is simply cut from some Christmas fabric I purchased at a local craft store). I ran into an issue while sewing with the pins in place and wound up having to remove the pesky ones that were in the way of the presser foot, but that wasn't too often.

I have to admit, while I like sewing with the machine, I don't really care for sewing small items such as this. Not only is it frustrating because of all the stop and go, but the size made the ornaments difficult to turn out once they were all sewn up. I do like, however, the fact that it cut my sewing time by elevntyhundred hours. Had I thought about what I was going to do for my nieces for Christmas earlier in the year, I would have gotten a jump start on the ornaments and probably would have done them all by hand. Oh, who am I kidding. I would have planned it and probably would never have gotten around to it and would have skipped the whole thing altogether had it not been for the sewing machine.

I did remember to leave a bit of a gap so I could turn the ornament, which for me is a small miracle. I was surprised I managed to get all nine ornaments sewn on the machine without mucking up any of them. Of course, I still have a small bit of hand-sewing to do, which leaves plenty of room for mucking about, but the gaps are small, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once I finished sewing the ornaments, I trimmed off excess material and clipped the corners. I made sure to leave a little extra fabric on the side that needed to be sewn up so I had a little more fabric for playing (or mucking, as the case may be). When turning the ornament, I used my scissors (the deadly-cut-you-so-you-bleed scissors) to poke out the corners, and that's only because I managed to misplace the seam ripper that I used to own years ago. I know this was a bad idea, but thankfully it had no bad results. I told B a seam ripper would make a great stocking stuffer, so hopefully I won't be turning corners with my scissors too much longer.

Once turned, I stuffed the ornaments with a little bit of Polyfil (very little bit) and made sure it was tucked into the corners as well (again with the scissors of death). I then folded the fabric at the gap down into the ornament to be flush with the seam already there and pinned it shut so I would have an easier time sewing the hidden seam. I still have a few ornaments left to stuff and pin and then I will work on the seams after all that is done.

I'm not looking forward to the hand-sewing, mostly because I have a "boo-boo" on my favorite needle pushing finger (middle finger, right hand). It currently qualifies as a boo-boo and not a sore, wound, or crack (or anything else it could be called) since it is wrapped up in a Care Bears bandage as well as a Hello Kitty bandage. it has certainly caught Sophie's attention!

These ornaments should be done by tomorrow night or Sunday at the latest. I will probably take a blanket (or perhaps all three?) with us to B's parents house on Sunday if we go over there to watch the football game. I'm not sure when I'm going to get the decoupage done. I do have a few more gifts coming in the mail that need to be sent to the Great White North in time for Christmas Eve, so I have a little time. I have a feeling I'll have to do an overnight shipping or something with this package, though. I was the one asking around about Christmas gifts and trying to figure out what to get Sophie well before Thanksgiving, and I'm still rushed to get everything done. One of these years I will get organized and be done by Thanksgiving (yeah, right!). Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?