We normally head off for the holiday, like a ton of you do, and spend about three or four days out of town with family for the holiday. This year, that didn’t really work out for us, so we stayed at home and created our own Thanksgiving holiday as best we could. We had the turkey, the dressing which was MADE FROM SCRATCH, like, I made the cornbread that went into the cornbread stuffing FROM SCRATCH, appreciate it NOW, the green bean casserole, and the pumpkin pie. We went to a lot of trouble for a meal that lasted about thirty minutes and required a lot of cajoling on the part of two very small people to just try the dressing for heavens’ sake before you start howling about how you don’t like it. Next year – frozen pizza. I’ll make the pie again, though.

While everything was roasting and baking and cooling, we managed to get some Christmas decorating started.

That is our brand new, frabjulous Christmas tree. It has a billion tips and a four hundred thousand lights or something, and I love it. I mainly love it because it does not look like a large version of a Charlie Brown christmas tree. While he was doing that, I turned into Martha Stewart and slapped up some garland and poinsettias around the house.

I can’t just, you know, bake and cook the entire holiday. I have some leftover fabric from the Half Squares quilt top that I put together, and with the help of a tutorial, I’m attempting my first applique. So far, I think it’s okay, but we’ll see when I give them away as gifts. I’m on the watch for Present Face. Giving handmade gifts is always a tricky thing, because while there are folks out there that appreciate the time and effort, there are other people that thing that handmade = cheap or dumb. You have to be careful and choose your recipients wisely.

The worst part of the whole thing was figuring out a way to get all of the little leaves cut out without losing my mind, but one Lifetime sappy movie later, I managed to get it knocked out. I’ve sewn some of them onto the canvas I’m using for backing, and I’m happy to report that I only have to pick out the stitches on one of them and redo it. I plan on making two of these suckers.

We finished everything up with a trip to a nearby zoo; the kids had never been, and were appropriately excited. Especially when this dude slipped into the water and came up close for a little heart stopping fun:

He was inches from us, just kinda…I don’t know, trying to decide if we’d taste good if he could get to the other side of the glass. I’m sure I’d be pretty damn tasty, Mr. Crocodile, but I think I’ll skip the taste testing portion of the visit.

So. There’s a serious explosion of babies lately; so many that I’m not really sure what they are putting in the water, but HOO-BOY am I glad that the ol’ tubes are tied. Whatever it is that is causing all of y’all go get frisky, it’s powerful stuff. This doesn’t impact me directly, except that there is a flood of new babies to hold and snuggle and hand back at the first sign of a dirty diaper or fussy time, but it does require me to sew, quilt, and knit my buns off in an effort to provide handmade lovies for all of these folks.

Unfortunately, while everyone EXPECTS something, I’m all about SURPRISE, HERE IS YOUR QUILT/SWEATER/WHATEVER, so I like to keep it on the d-l. Hence, I cannot show you pictures of said quilts until they are sent out to the mommies. (Let’s face it – the daddies generally don’t care.) But I do happen to have something I can show you, in the form of  a finished quilt top:

That would be a half-squares quilt, with Moda Tranquility for the pattern and some Kona cotton for the solid. I FREAKIN’ LOVE IT. Who knew that two triangles could make something so fantastic?!  I haven’t gotten anything to back it with as of yet, but I think that I’m going to leave this downstairs as Mommy’s Blanket (No, You May Not Play Superman With It, Go Find Your Own Blanket). I have to have a blanket on me when I’m chillin’ on the couch, and this one looks to be mine.

Also, I made baby shoes. Considering that 99% of the babies that are popping out these days are boys, you would think that I’d make them in some boy appropriate fabric so that I could give them to someone.

They are decidedly pink, and also decidedly for a baby, which my two-year old was rather unhappy about as she tried to squeeze her fat little foot into one of them. I couldn’t find anything heavy to give them more padding on the bottom, so I made something up:

THAT’S RIGHT. I quilted baby slippers. Lord knows what else I could have been doing with my time, but I got the bug out of my system and they can sit until Sarah realizes that they will fit her Cabbage Patch. After that, I’m not sure I want them back.

I just kinda…vanished there, for a while. Huh.

ANYWAY, I have put my time to good use – setting up the house, hosting parties, and trying to figure out exactly why my two-year-old is attempting to wear me down with the shrill sound of her scream. Whatever the situation, it’s apparently appropriate to scream your little, tiny, red-faced head off, making it difficult to determine if you are in actual pain or just being a pain in the ass.

(Hint: most times? PAIN IN THE ASS. Trust me on this.)

Regardless of how insane she’s been acting, I still found the courage to dress them both up and hit the new neighborhood for Trick or Treating this year. I was accompanied by Optimus Prime and a ladybug fairy. And no, I’m not really sure what a ladybug fairy is, either, but when you’re two it’s really about getting to put on a fancy dress.

They made a pretty decent haul on the candy, half of which was confiscated because it isn’t age appropriate – like, she can’t have small, hard candy because she’ll choke on it. The Snickers bars we took are what we like to call the “Parent Tax”. It’s totally legal, I assure you.

There has also been some sewing and quilting being done. This:

Became this:

And I’m now plowing my way through a giant effing quilt for my husband; there is nothing I’d rather NOT be doing than dragging a full size quilt through my machine, but in the name of marital harmony, I’m totally doing it. Do you REALIZE how much hand sewing is required to turn the binding on something that large? I have a strained wrist, no joke, because of it.  I will totally be sticking to baby quilts in the future.