Christmas Pajamas

This year I made homemade pajamas for the boys to open and wear on Christmas Eve just like I've done the past two years. I ordered the Michael Miller mitten flannel a few months ago, but of course, waited until a few days before Christmas to actually make the pajama pants. They really don't take very long. I think it took me less than 2 hours to make both sets of pants. I had a heck of a time finding plain colored long sleeve t-shirts in any of my local craft stores this year. So I ended up ordering shirts online from Jiffy Shirts. They were pretty reasonably priced even with shipping and arrived VERY quickly, within two days of my online order. I freezer-paper-stenciled the mittens on the shirt to match the mitten flannel of the pants. I bought enough extra flannel to make myself a matching pair of pj pants, but haven't sewn those yet. I will also have to order myself a t-shirt from Jiffy shirts to match. While I'm at it, I'll probably order a few shirts to paint for Valentine's Day. I'm thinking of doing homemade pjs for that as a surprise. We'll see...........


Below are photos of the pajamas. My boys knew they were getting these, but didn't know the "theme" this year. My little boy had fun guessing what he thought they would be............his main guess was "presents", but he was WRONG!

In case you are interested............I just ordered THIS FABRIC for next year's pajamas and I'm headed over to Jiffy Shirts to order the t-shirts for Valentine's and next Christmas too!

"Gear"ing up for a trip

We are taking a trip very soon that involves air travel. For quite some time I have wanted to sew the boys some new "gear" to take with them. Of course I waited until this weekend to get started. I am pretty happy with how these turned out. I made each boy a drawstring backpack using THIS TUTORIAL from Martha Stewart. These backpacks were SO easy to make. I am pretty sure I made them from start to finish.......both of them........in under an hour. They will be awesome to take on hikes, etc. this summer. I used a contrasting cotton print fabric for the inside instead of nylon recommended in the link. Also........I bought the fabric at Hobby Lobby and they didn't have drawstring cord. So I used really narrow double-fold bias tape. I just had to stitch it together first using a straight seam down the middle. This worked okay but if you have access to cord that would be easier and would eliminate a step. I used Wonder-Under to iron a monogram on each pack.




And I made each boy a drawing pad/crayon holder to match their new backpacks. They both like to draw and write so I knew these would be great for taking on the plane. To make these I used THIS TUTORIAL from Skip to My Lou. I had to adjust it somewhat to make it shorter from top to bottom so it would better fit the drawing pads I bought at Target.





When opened they look like this. I put Crayola Twistable crayons in the pockets. You could also put colored pencils.

Valentine Pillows

Today DH, my little boy, and I went to Hobby Lobby. Oh, how I LOVE that store!! My big boy was spending a little time with Grandma and Grandpa. Anyway, I needed to pick up some things for school for next week and they tagged along. I also wanted to get some Valentine fabric to make some pillows for my boys. I settled for the print I bought because there was literally no other choice. It's pretty cute, I guess, but I would have appreciated a better selection. Anyway, I'd seen the idea for making Valentine pillows in THIS POST on How Does She? (which is a great blog with great ideas that I discovered recently). For some reason I decided to make my pillows round. I had bought some really wide rick-rack to trim them with. I am not totally pleased with how they turned out, but my boys love them already. And that's what's important, after all. I used some sparkly felt to make a heart-shaped pocket on the front of each pillow. The top of the heart is open so that each day in February up until Valentine's Day I can tuck a little "love" note into the pocket for each boy. Hopefully, DH will write notes to them too. I know my oldest son, especially, will treasure these little love notes because he is always very touched when we write special things to him.



Here's a close-up of the pocket on the front. I added the small pink heart in the middle for an accent. I had originally sewn it on using a straight stitch but was really unhappy with how that looked. I like the loose zig-zag much better.




The "love" pillow below is another in my series of freezer-paper stencilled burlap holiday pillows. I painted the "love" on the burlap ages ago and just had to sew and stuff it which I finally did tonight. It took MANY coats of white paint to make the word look really white on the red burlap. If you are planning to freezer-paper stencil on burlap, remember to place some waxed paper underneath because the paint really bleeds through. I found that out after I accidently printed the word "believe" on my ironing board cover. Like DH said, though, it's not a bad word to ponder while you are ironing. He irons WAY more than I do. I try to buy clothes that don't have to be ironed. In fact, I only iron when doing sewing projects. Anyway, I digress. I added a little heart pocket on the back of this pillow so I can write love notes to DH in February. AWWWWWWWWW...............how sweet is that? Maybe if I'm lucky he'll write a note or two back to me. (hint hint)




Here's the pocket on the back.

FYI: For the heart shapes I used patterns printed from Preschool Express. If you click on the left sidebar on "Pattern Station" you will find printable shapes for all sorts of occasions. I often find patterns there that I can use for school.

What we've been up to

I haven't checked in here for over a week .........so I'm long overdue for a post. Here's a quick update about what's been going on.

First...........today I didn't have preschool because our local school district called a two-hour late start due to blowing snow. However, I was not aware of this until I went to school. I had gotten up early to work out and checked the school closings on TV before switching over to a cable channel while I ran on the treadmill. Afterwards I figured we were still on since by that time it was getting too late to call a delay (or so I thought). It was pretty bad driving on the back roads I take to get to school, but our superintendent rarely calls a late-start due to weather. It wasn't until I drove past our high school and noticed there were very few cars and NO busses that it dawned on me that perhaps something was amiss. I immediately called our local elementary school (where I used to work) when I got into my office and then found out that there was a two-hour late start. I guess the teacher was truly the last to know today. I stayed and worked for a while before heading home with my little boy.

When I got home I decided to sew a chicken saddle for one of our hens. I had cut it out this weekend and just had to put it together. For those of you who are not fully aware of the tools of the modern chicken farmer, a chicken saddle is a piece of fabric that is attached to the back of a hen who has been "overloved" by a rooster. Unfortunately one of our hens, Clara, is apparently very popular with our rooster, Arthur, and has developed a very nasty sore on her back due to his overzealous advances. Yuck, huh? Fortunately I was able to research this problem on Backyard Chickens and found that some people put a "saddle" on the hen to protect her back during mating. I found a great pattern on Back To Basic Living and sewed it up just a little bit ago. Since Clara has tan feathers (she is a Buff Orpington chicken) I tried to find a fabric in my stash that would color coordinate with her feathers. To slap any old fabric on her back would just be wrong. Of course it has to look good with her coloring. Lucky for Clara I found a scrap of designer Amy Butler fabric in my scrap stash. In case she really starts to love wearing high fashion I already have a handbag to match.........isn't that awesome?

Below you can see two photos showing the new chicken saddle. It basically lays right on the hen's back and the elastic straps snap under her wings.







OK..........chicken saddle done, all very well and good, right? The hard part, of course, was getting the dang thing on the chicken. Of course I wanted to try it on her right away. So, armed with my chicken boots, "chore" coat, camera and the new saddle, I headed out to the coop. First I took the photo you see below. I wanted to show you the sore on Clara's back that prompted this little sewing project. It is so gross looking and her feathers have come out in that area.




It took me quite a while to catch Clara to put the saddle on her, even though the interior space of the chicken coop is only about 64 square feet. She was just not grasping the idea that she was soon to become the most fashionable girl in the flock. During the "dressing" I had stuffed my camera in the pocket of my coat so I could have both hands free to wrestle with Clara. I managed to successfully get the saddle on her and put her down. Then the other chickens started pulling on it and one of the straps came loose. So...........I had to catch her again to reattach it. When I leaned over to pick her up two funny things happened. My camera fell out of my pocket and into the not-so-clean pine shavings on the floor of the coop AND Sarah, our little white chicken, flew up and sat on my back!! I'm sure that had this been filmed I could have won our family a large amount of money on "America's Funniest Home Videos". I finally got the saddle back on Clara and released her, much to her relief, I'm sure. She immediately turned her head and started trying to pull the saddle off her back. The first photo shows her doing just that.



Here is the best picture I got of Clara with her saddle. I probably don't need to tell you that chickens are hard to photograph under any circumstances, but they are especially difficult to photograph when they have recently undergone the trauma of having clothing attached to their body. I'm just sayin'..........forgive me for the poor photo, 'kay? I am thinking that the saddle might be a little big for her because it should really fit closer to her body. However, it does completely cover her "owie" which is the goal after all.

After all this hullaballoo I would not be the least bit surprised to go out to the coop later this afternoon to find my beautiful, handmade chicken saddle trampled and dirty on the floor of the coop. In fact, I am pretty sure that I WILL find it off Clara's back and buried in the pine shavings. I'll keep you posted. ;-)

PS: In other news, my husband has been busy this weekend helping our sons make their cars for the upcoming Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We were excited to find out at last week's pack meeting that there is a separate category for siblings, so our little boy gets to make a car too. He is BEYOND excited about it. I will post more about that soon, FOR SURE!!

Edited to add: At 4:00 p.m. I went out to the coop to do my afternoon "chicken chores". As predicted, the chicken saddle was off Clara's back and lying on the pine shavings. So..........I think I'm going to try a design that doesn't use snaps and see if she'll keep that on. If that doesn't work then.............too bad, so sad. At least I tried. And for heaven's sake, if she would just keep her clothes on she probably wouldn't be in this situation to begin with!! (Sorry..............I couldn't resist writing that. Please know that I'm KIDDING!!)

It was a two-egg day (and other happenings)

Well, this morning after I jogged on the treadmill (I finished the 8-week running program and am now officially a "runner") and took a shower I decided to cook up the two eggs I had gathered from our chickens over the past few days. Only a blogger or scrapbooker would take a bunch of photos of cooking an egg. Since I happen to participate in both hobbies (though much more of the blogging than the scrapbooking lately) I DID take some photos. Below you can see the two eggs ready to be cooked. Is it just me or are those yolks incredibly yellow?



I was originally going to do fried eggs but realized once I got going that I don't really know how to make a fried egg. Isn't that lame? I am sure I could Google it, but I think that is even more lame. So I made fried/scrambled eggs instead. My little boy was excited when I started making the eggs, saying he wanted to eat some. My oldest son was not so enthused. He stated that he would rather eat the eggs from our chickens if they were baked in something instead of cooked on the stove. He also informed me that he really liked them "like Easter eggs", not fried or scrambled.



Here you can see that I went from fried to scrambled since I don't know how to flip an egg without it going everywhere. I am sure my husband could teach me. He is really good with eggs. I think he was outside running when I was doing this.




Here is the finished product. Let me tell you.............those eggs were AWESOME!! Seriously. Once they were done my oldest son decided he wanted to try them. So the boys and I all had a fork and that egg disappeared faster than a ripe banana in a chicken coop..........in other words, it was gone in under a minute. After we scarfed down the egg, I decided to go out to the coop to see if any more eggs had been laid. I think it was about 11:00 a.m. when I did this. I was pleased to find another little brown egg (there hadn't been any when I was out in the coop earlier in the morning). When I brought it inside my little boy wanted me to cook it right away (which I did) and to eat it right away (which he did). The new egg was laid right under our nesting box so later in the day my husband went out and removed the nesting box I posted about yesterday. We decided it may be too small for the hens to lay in. He replaced it with a plastic milk crate that we just put right down on the litter in the corner. When he was doing all this he also found a white egg in the coop!! So that means that two of our hens are now laying eggs (and that's why today was a 2-egg day). I am so proud of those girls! They are awesome! I can't wait to eat more of their eggs. They are so tasty.




Moving on to other news since you are likely sick of hearing about eggs. My mom invited us all over to her home this afternoon to exchange gifts. Traditionally we go to my parents' house on Christmas Eve to eat a meal, exchange gifts, then go to the Christmas Eve service at our church. Because of the big snowstorm that we are supposed to get tomorrow our Christmas Eve service has already been cancelled and we are likely to be snowed in for a few days. So we got together today. It was fun. My mom always finds really fun gifts for the boys. Below you can see my little boy's hands. He got a Playskool race car driver helmet. It comes with a hand-held control/steering wheel that has all kinds of cool sound effects. The helmet has a microphone that you can talk into. He LOVES it. He played with it so much when we got home.

One of the gifts my oldest son received was a little magic tricks kit. He immediately went off to my parents' bedroom to study a trick. Below you can see him and his volunteer (AKA Daddy) doing a ring and rope trick that he learned.

When we got home I holed up in my craft room to sew the boys' Christmas Eve pajamas. I had painted their shirts earlier in the day. I didn't have a sewing pattern........I just grabbed a pair of pants for each of them that currently fit them and used that as a pattern. The PJ pants went together really quickly and I think the boys will be excited to open them tomorrow night. Below you can see the shirt and pants together. In hindsight I kind of wish I had bought red shirts instead of the dark blue because I think that would have looked cuter with the flannel I bought. Oh well!

This last photo makes me go "WAH!!". I took the PJ pants I made last year for each boy and laid them on top of the new ones, all lined up at the waistband. In the photo you can see how much longer I had to make the ones for this year. Of course I want my children to grow and be healthy...........but I still feel wistful when I think of how fast they are growing up. I want to hang onto and treasure every moment with them. I love them both so much!!

The boys and I were also pretty busy today trying to finish some more of our Advent books and ornaments. I will do some posts on those soon. I am positive now that our Advent book activities will have to trickle past Christmas Day. Even though I planned only 15 (not 25 like last year) we have so far only done nine. Again.........oh, well! We've enjoyed doing it and hopefully the boys will be up for finishing all of them. Then I can stash the ornaments away for the Festival of Trees next year!!

A bit of everything

Be forewarned..........this is a very photo-dense post. I am too lazy to do a bunch of separate posts so I'm playing catch-up and writing one big post to describe all that's been going on here since I posted one week ago. First let me say that the reason I finally found time to blog tonight is because we had to cancel a family get-together that was supposed to be at our house TONIGHT because there is a big ice storm moving into the area. I was really bummed out because the boys and I were really excited to have everyone over here and we had made a bunch of stuff to give out to the guests. But, I would rather have my loved ones be safe, so instead I am catching up on blogging.


I guess I'll start by summarizing what I've done in the past week. OK...........last Wednesday night I went to my MOPS Christmas party which was very fun, as always. We had an ornament exchange. I forgot to take a photo of the one I brought home.........it's a glass snowman with green accents. Love it! On Thursday last week my oldest son had his winter program for school. The theme of his program was "Peace". His role in the program was to read aloud a report he had written about Nelson Mandela. He got up in front of an auditorium filled with people and read his report out loud. He was so poised and read with such expression. I was so proud of him that my eyes welled up with tears as he read. He is such an awesome kid!! On Friday I went out to a local Mexican place with a few friends to celebrate the 40th birthday of my neighbor. On Saturday the boys and I went over to Amber's house. She is our daycare provider. My little boy goes to her house two half-days a week. She always hosts a Christmas get-together for her daycare families and had a breakfast this year. There is always a special guest who appears during her get-togethers----------Santa Claus! And he always has a gift for each child. My boys got two new games from Santa...........Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee. These are great additions to our games collection. Thank you, Amber! I went shopping Saturday afternoon and Saturday night the boys and I and my mom went to a Christmas pageant at a mega-church in our area. We met my friend Julie and her family there. (DH was home with the dog. We have to keep him on a rigid medication schedule. He has made it almost 6 weeks without a seizure, the longest he's ever gone and we don't want to mess that up!) The pageant is amazing.........almost like (I imagine) a Broadway show. There are live animals (camels walking past us only 1 foot away) and angels who truly fly across the set on zip-lines. There was real snow falling on us during one part and there is always just an amazing and touching reenactment of the first Christmas story along with an inspirational modern storyline. I am so glad we went.


During the past week in my preschool classroom, the children and I were busy making parent gifts. Below you can see the one my little boy made for me!! If you are curious about this project, read this post over at my school blog. These would be great to make if you need to still whip up a last-minute gift. They take only a few minutes and turn out really pretty.







Last Friday I read this post on WhimsyLove and instantly knew I wanted to make some of these to give my female relatives at our get-together that was supposed to be tonight. When I was out and about on Saturday afternoon I stopped by my favorite thrift store and picked up 5 vintage spoons for about 75 cents. They had the half-price colored tag on them!! I typed up the story from Nikki's post and printed it out on cardstock. I used a corner-rounder to decorate the corners and then I adhered them to another color of cardstock and fancied up those corners. I tied a ribbon around the spoon and stuck an ornament hanger through the back so the spoons could be hung on the tree as shown below.






I punched a hole in the corner of the story and tied it to the spoons as shown here.

I love the message behind this story. I truly believe that the best IS yet to come. Hopefully I can still get-together with my family soon and pass out the spoons I've made.

When I went to Hobby Lobby Saturday I picked up supplies so my boys could make an ornament for each person at our family gathering (the one that now ISN'T tonight.........can you tell I'm disappointed?). All the holiday items were at least 50% off, so I got some great deals. I wanted the clear glass ornaments but they only had the frosted ones left. I have seen lots of initial ornaments around the blogosphere lately and wanted to copy those. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sticker letters I found, but they were glittery and Christmasy.

We stuffed red gift shred into the ornaments as shown. This was much harder than you would think as you pretty much had to do it strand by strand. My little boy soon tired of the project after this photo was taken. I can't say I blame him!

After filling them with the shred, we attached the top, added a letter sticker, an ornament hanger and a ribbon. We made 15 ornaments in all and have some left for future crafting.

The photo below shows one finished ornament.

Also this weekend I made a ton of chocolate pretzel rods to give as gifts to Sunday School teachers, school teachers, bus drivers, etc. OOPS! I guess DH needs to get a bag since he is the bus driver for our oldest child who attends a private school!! I think I have an extra one, honey!

Here they are all packaged up and ready to give out!!

We also have exciting news from the chicken coop. On Saturday I went out and found a perfect little brown egg frozen to the ground in the chicken run. I had to pour warm water on it to get it off the ground and the shell broke in the process. I didn't get a photo of the FIRST egg due to this! Below you can see Sarah and Abby hanging out on the roost in the chicken run. I have suspicions that Abby is our egg-layer.

On Sunday there was another perfect little brown egg, this time inside the coop on the floor. It was still warm to the touch when I brought it inside. Since we didn't have a nesting box in the coop yet, DH and I had to scurry to put something in place with the hope that our egg-layer would soon find a proper place to deposit her daily treasures. The next two photos show two little sets of hand holding our first (unbroken) egg!!

We decided (for ease of time and labor in very cold weather) to repurpose an old kitty litter bucket to use as a nesting box. DH just used a screw to attach it to the wall of the coop as shown below. On Backyard Chickens I have read that it helps the chickens know what it's for if you put some fake eggs in it. So you can see two plastic Easter eggs in it in the photos. On Monday there was another perfect little brown egg. It was found below the nesting box, not inside. But the two eggs IN the nesting box, the fake ones, were mysteriously moved to different places so there has definitely been some fowl play involved. haha

Below you can see the nesting box relative to where the roost is in the coop. Today I could find no evidence of an egg anywhere. So we'll have to see what happens next. Very exciting developments in chicken farming I must say. I have yet to cook one of the two eggs we've retrieved. DH seems a bit squeamish about the whole thing but I've just been too busy. It's kind of scary that we have moved so far from our agrarian roots as a society that we are cautious to eat food that comes directly from the animal of origin. When you think about it, there's nothing more natural than eating an egg laid by your own hen, is there?? I'll let you know once I cook it if it's the best egg I've ever had.

On the homemade gift-making front I've been busy. Below is a photo of a little doodad I made for my oldest son's teachers. As I mentioned above, their winter program theme was "peace" so I decided to make these little word-art knick-knacks for his teachers as a gift. I had seen something very similar in a Country Living magazine a few months ago. Luckily I had a thrifted Scrabble game in my crafting stash. I just sawed off the letter-holder pieces to the right size and glued the letter tiles onto them with Elmer's glue. Easy peasy! These would be great to make for Valentine's Day, spelling LOVE or other sentiments.

In keeping with my "give thanks" pillow from Thanksgiving I decided to make up some "believe" pillows. I gave one to each of my classroom assistants who are also my youngest son's teachers. I also gave one to Amber, our daycare provider. And I kept one for myself since I am also my son's teacher and since all his other teacher's got one................. I love how these turned out. I am already thinking of "let it snow" on blue burlap for January, "love" on red for February, "get lucky" on green for March...........OK..........maybe not that one!! :0)

Also for Amber, our daycare gal and my good friend, I made a Christmas apron. I didn't use a pattern, just kind of winged it. I started it Sunday night and finished it yesterday. I gave it to Amber today and to my face she said she liked it. Actually, I know she really did like it because she loves aprons. I loved the really big rick-rack. Aprons are so easy to whip together. I can't believe I don't actually own one. I need to change that!! Maybe a good Christmas break sewing project.

Here's a closeup of the rick-rack trim and fabric.

The only other handmade gift I need to finish (I mean, start and finish) is pajamas for the boys. I made them a set of pajamas last year and wanted to continue the tradition. I already have the shirts and fabric so I'll start those tomorrow. They'll be ready to wear by Christmas Eve. Whew! Now you can see why I haven't posted in a week! In case I don't post again before Christmas, please have a blessed day with your family. And treasure the reason behind the season. There is truly no greater gift than Jesus. My wish is that each of you reading this would know and embrace that truth this year.

Advent Book Activity: The Christmas Hat & Santa hat ornaments

On Wednesday the boys and I read The Christmas Hat by A.J. Wood for our fifth Advent book. To go with this book we made little Santa hat ornaments. They were basically the ones shown here, but instead of gluing the ribbon and felt I sewed them on my sewing machine. I folded the triangle with right sides together and placed the ribbon INSIDE the fold, sewed up the side seam and then turned it right side out. The final step was gluing the cotton balls on. These were SO cute, but I think they would have been much harder and more frustrating to make had we glued them.





Below you can see the little hats on the tree. I think they look so cute. I wish we had made more of them.

"give thanks" pillow

OK.........I've been hinting around about a few projects in the works and I finally buckled down last night and stayed up late to finish one of them so I could post it. Since I've started the new running program I haven't been staying up very late but today was a rest day so I made an exception last night. My inspiration for this project was some burlap monogram lampshades I saw over on Rhoda's blog a while back. I thought it was a great idea and I love doing freezer paper stencilling. Immediately I could envision how cute it would be to do a "give thanks" pillow on burlap with my boys' handprints decorated like turkeys and that is what I decided to try to do.

In case you are unfamiliar with freezer paper stencilling I decided to make this a detailed step-by-step post. If you aren't interested or already know how scroll down to see the finished pillow.

First I found a font I liked and printed out the words "give thanks" in a Word document using landscape orientation. The font I used is called Kristen ITC. I just kept enlarging the font until it pretty much filled up the entire 8 1/2 by 11 inch space. My font size was probably about 200 although I can't remember exactly. I also used bold typeface. Once I had it how I wanted it (I also had to adjust the margins to make them as narrow as possible) I printed it out. I then placed the copy underneath a piece of freezer paper (shiny side down) and traced it onto the printer paper with a pen. See photo below.

The next step was the most tedious and probably took me about 30 minutes. I did it while watching TV. Using nail scissors I carefully cut out the insides of all the letters from the freezer paper. Make sure when you do this to cut out the middles of your letters and don't discard them as you will need to iron them on during the next step.




Once all the letters were cut out I ironed the freezer paper (shiny side down) onto a big piece of burlap. Use a dry iron for this or the freezer paper will get wrinkly. Be sure to carefully iron on the center of your letters with open middles. Check to be sure all edges are adhered securely to the fabric.




Next, using a paintbrush (sponge ones are great for this) tap fabric paint inside all the letters until they are covered as shown below. You may need to add another coat. I usually do this one right after another instead of waiting for the paint to dry between coats. I'm impatient like that.




You will need to let the paint dry for several hours (I usually do this after the boys' bedtime and let it dry overnight). Once it's dry, carefully peel off the freezer paper to reveal your image. This is my favorite part of freezer paper stencilling. It always looks so good when you peel off the paper. I was a little leery of how this would turn out on burlap as I've only ever freezer paper stencilled on knit jersey fabric. It worked like a dream!!

Since I wanted to add the hand turkeys I painted the boys' hands and fingers with the fabric paint and stamped them on either side of the words. This didn't work so well and I had to go back with a paintbrush and fill in the paint quite a bit. I then used more fabric paint to add a bead, wattle, eye and legs to the turkeys. I am bummed about how the black paint for the eyes spread out. I think I was using old paint and it was pretty runny. :0(

This one is my little boy's hand.

And my big boy's hand.

I finished the painting about a week ago and last night I finally headed down to the craft room to sew the pillow. I just cut an even rectangle around the painted part and then used that as a template to cut a second piece of burlap for the back. I sewed the two sides together (paint side out) leaving a very wide margin all around so I could trim it afterwards. I left a hole a few inches wide and stuffed the pillow full of polyester fiberfill. Then I sewed up the hole. It was pretty easy to do this even though the pillow was full of stuffing. The final step was to trim all the edges evenly (eyeballed it) and then fray the edges to give it a fringed trim. The stitching line stops the fraying so I just pulled out strands until I was really close to the stitching. I LOVE the fringed trim. It's just about my favorite part aside from the hand turkeys. Oh.......and I also love how the saying turned out. OK............I just love the whole thing. It's fun when an idea goes from your head to reality and looks as good as or better than you imagined it. This will be a fun keepsake to pull out and display each November.

Here's a close-up of the fringed corner.

If you like this idea but are intimidated by the sewing part think of how cute this would be just done up on burlap, fringed, and hung on a dowel instead of being made into a pillow. You could also frame it. Many possibilities. When I bought the tan burlap at Hobby Lobby I also bought about a yard of red burlap. (Burlap is really inexpensive by the way.) I thought it would be very cute to make some little red pillows with "ho ho ho" stencilled on them for Christmas. So........that's on the to-do list too. A burlap pillow (or burlap in a frame) with a monogram would make a great, easy and inexpensive Christmas gift. Your children could help out with the painting and stuffing part. I have a lot of burlap left and am already thinking of more project ideas. Fun, fun, fun!!