I strategically saved my floating holidays and personal days so that I'd have this second half of this month off of work. I had grand plans of cleaning, organizing and crafting. But of course, the holidays get in the way and I'm pretty sure not even 10% of what I planned to make will come to be. Stephanie and I had a crafty day today. She lugged her sewing machine and her yummy apple cake over and we got down to some good crafty business!

I had hoped to complete at least 3 new garments over my "winter break" so that I'd have some new clothes to wear to work. If I'm lucky, I'll get one thing sewn for myself. I had given myself the choice of working on the already in progress McCall's 5480, starting my gifts for my friend's baby shower, or starting something new. I knew deep down that starting something new was out of the question and of course Steph shouted an emphatic, "NO!" when I blurted out that option. Being that my friend's shower is less than two weeks away, baby gift sewing trumps any personal sewing projects.

Did I also forget to mention that in addition to it being crafty day, it was also "eat desserts 'til you want to give up sugar forever day"? Okay, it really wasn't that bad. But before I knew that Steph was baking apple cake for us, I had baked us some red velvet cupcakes. But that wasn't all. I also had some leftover dark chocolate tart from my family's Christmas dinner AND some Mexican chocolate butter cookies that I made. Talk about sweet overload. But at least the sugar helped keep us going.

So what's on the baby gift drawing board? Butterick 3405 and, of course, a quilt. I started view B and C along with matching bloomers and possibly a matching hat for C. I've got 1/3 of the fabric for the quilt and need to go shopping for the rest of it along with the snaps for the outfits. I'm going pretty overboard for this baby, huh? But heck, I think it's worth it.

Besides, it just feels good to be sewing again. I haven't sewn a single stitch for the entire month of December until today.