Christmas Pillows

It begins yet again.  Turkey remains that are too old too eat are barely in the trash before the Christmas Make-a-Thon kicks in high gear.  Each year I try to start earlier on projects and try to simplify the planning for the Season, but somehow I always have more things I want to make than I have days.  This is our first real Christmas at the cabin.  Last year we decorated here a little, but our holiday get-together with the kids was at the condo.  Decorating the condo was a two or three hour job.  We had already put out our Christmas stuff there so many years that it was automatic.  Now that we live at the cabin year-round, I found it took much longer to figure out what to do.  We gave away/sold lots of our decorations, but did keep what we loved and what we felt would look good here.  Needless to say, we still had more fa-la-la than we could possibly use!  I still am keeping t two boxes of stuff that I just can't part with, but don't have a good spot for.  Three boxes of leftover stuff will be up for grabs for the kids and grandkids.  I didn't have any holiday pillows, though, in the unpacked boxes.  Where are they?  Did they get sold?  Snatched up by children?  Maybe I didn't have any before?  Hmm.  A mystery.  A dash to Shopko solved the problem.  I bought a few plain pillows with piping.  Tore out their guts.  Stitched on some simple applique with gold thread, re-stuffed (less firmly - I don't like rock-hard pillow), and sewed the opening closed.  I made a third pillow that has NOEL embroidered in gold thread, but it looks totally out of place with these other two pillows and even a bit too fancy for the whole setting.  I don't want to pick out all those teeny  tiny stitches, but I may just applique a rectangle over the letters.  No one will ever know what is underneath.  Don't tell anyone.  Jerilynn