I know I start the posts like this a lot, but very recently Julius has started doing the cutest thing! He helps me clean up! Last night I accidentally left a bottle of milk on the upholstered bench upstairs and the bottle wasn’t put together properly and leaked all over the bench, staining it. I was very frustrated, but this morning I got together some dish soap and water (internet recommendation) to clean it up. I started working the mixture into the stain with my fingertips and Julius watched me intently and started helping. Afterwards I started scrubbing it with a cloth and I handed Julius the cloth and he continued the process. Later today I got Julius all cleaned up while he was sitting in his high chair and then started wiping down his high chair table. I put the cloth down for a second and he grabbed the cloth and continued wiping! What a big helper!
This evening I got home from work and Julius pointed to the closet where we keep our shoes and coats. I opened it up and explained to him exactly what it was for and then put my shoes in the closet (my shoes had been strategically sitting in the middle of the floor ready to trip someone). Julius then spent several minutes working to shut the door himself (it is in a tricky spot so he kept getting trapped between the closet door and our back door.) I decided to bring him his shoes, and he immediately reopened the door (laboriously) then took a shoe and put it on the top shelf! I told him what a good job he had done and then he grabbed the shoe off the top shelf, put it on the floor next to the other one, grabbed them both by the backs using one hand, then thought better of it and chucked one into the door. My theory is that he saw me grabbing the shoes with one hand and thought that was the right way to do it, but his little hands prevented him from executing and he got frustrated and threw them. Who knows? Either way my little pumpkin is growing up fast!
You know what else is going by fast? Fall! We are already onto the second snow of the year tonight, though we haven’t even had a single cider donut! Tragedy! I’ve been drinking pumpkin beer like they are going out of style (or season) though so at least I’ve got that base covered. Keep fall around a bit longer by using the stems of your sugar pumpkins to make one of these super cute velvet pumpkins!
Velvet Pumpkin
What you’ll need:
- 16” diameter circle of velvet
- Embroidery thread in contrasting color
- 1 real pumpkin top from a sugar pumpkin (I was able to pull them directly off all my sugar pumpkins before I cooked them for pie.
- Stuffing
- Hot glue gun
- Needle & thread
- Stitch a long running stitch around the entire perimeter of your circle of velvet, about 1/4” from the edge.
- Begin gathering the stitches to form a pouch.
- Stuff full of stuffing until fairly firm, then pull the stitches closed.
- Stitch a couple stitches to close the hole, then re-stitch through the gathers for added strength and stitch a couple more stitches to finish it.
- Stitch and knot 3 strands of embroidery thread into the top of the pumpkin.
- Traverse the pumpkin longitudinally and then you get back to the starting point, pull tight to form a ridge in the pumpkin then stitch to tie off.
- Repeat 2 more times forming 6 segments of the pumpkin.
- Squish the top of the pumpkin down and move the stuffing around to make room for the stem.
- Knot 3 more strands of embroidery thread to the top of the pumpkin, insert directly through the center of the pumpkin to the underside. Loop over the 3 threads segmenting the pumpkin and back up into the pumpkin back into the top. Pull tight to form an indentation, then knot to secure.
- Make sure your pumpkin stem is completely dry (I waited a week) then coat the bottom of the stem in hot glue and press it onto your pumpkin covering up the gathering stitches and embroidery knots.
