Gingercake

Christmas Cookie Party 2013

In the past few years, my friends start asking me about the cookie party in Septmeber.  "You are going to have the cookie party, right???"  I will admit that it is pretty fun and pretty wonderful to have a plate full of gorgeous cookies when you head home after.  If you are interested, here is some info about cookie parties of the past~

Cookie Party 2010- in this post, I talk about the invitations and the rules which you are free to "borrow" and in this post, you can see actual photos of the party for that year.

Cookie Party 2011- more photos of cookie and holiday decorating!

Cookie Party 2012- it did happen but I had just given birth!  My friends came over and cleaned house for me, brought all the party snacks, and even baked my cookie for me!  Haha.  That was wonderful!

Cookie Party 2013-  now we are caught up.  THis year I decided to rock the prize giving and make some plans to make and give the winners something fun.  Enter- my beloved Kelle Boyd of Ann Kelle fabrics!  

There was a snow storm occurring outside the entire time of the cookie party this year.  Did that deter the cookie makers from coming over?? Of course not.  Above are the winners, Erika, Joann and Michelle in their Jingle fabric aprons.  I love that adorable fabric line so much.

This year, I had FIVE categories to vote on.  We had best tasting cookie (Erika), Most Beautiful Cookie (Joann) and Best all around cookie (michelle AGAIN!).  I added kid's vote since I felt like they really stacked the voting last year and were not as unbiased as they could have been.  Plus, they loved having theit own category.  The last vote was for most festive/ obnoxious christmas outfit.  

Here are Michelle's beautiful and delicious winning cookies.  They were a cookie dough chocolate covered bomb.  Delicious!

And, the most festive dresser was... ME!  

I pretty much dominated that category!  A couple hours before the party, I was feeling lame for only wearing that red snowflake turtleneck so I took 5 of Kelle's Jingle FQs and made myself a very simple skirt.  I attached it to the turtle neck and added my big 80s belt.  I threatened to wear this out of the house to my 9 year old's school Christmas party and she almost had a total melt down.  HAHA!  I didn't even bother to hem the skirt (see that little bit of selvage??) since I want to still use this fabric for something else.  Hopefully next year the ladies will give me some competition since it was a little akward to win my own prize!  

I hope to share the apron pattern soon.  It was very easy and fun to make.  Thanks so much to Kelle for sharing her fantastic (always high quality and so bright and beautiful) Jingle fabric with me.  Happy Christmas everyone!

 

Thank You and Handmade Arcade 2013

Novemeber was a fantastic month for Gingercake (aka moi).  I can't tell you how much I loved seeing all the beautiful things my sewing friends made with Gingercake patterns.  It was wonderful.  I realized that here on the blog I never shared our last (but certainly not least!) Gift series sewer.  Jessica from A Little Gray made an On the Go Organizer!

Her fabric combinations are the coolest, huh?  

Thank you so much to all the sewers in the holiday gift series!  

I did sew all the month of November for my show I do here in Pittsburgh called the Handmade Arcade.  I love doing this show so much!  It is edgy and hip and not your mama's typical craft show.  You can guess that all my pink stuff is pretty tame in comparison to lots of the other vendors!  I am honored they keep letting me participate every year.  Here are some photos of my 2013 booth~

Some new characters!  Did you notice?  More to come about the fox, owls, backpacks, patchwork bibs, and house pillows in the near future.  

This last photo of the bargain bin was the biggest surprise for me at for this show.  People LOVED the bargain bin.  I explained that these were gently used, trial sewing and things with spots.  People bought all but 1 thing in there!  I couldn't believe they wanted that old stuff!  I was happy to see it go (and maybe you will recognize things from old posts in there!) since I didn't want it anymore but didn't want to give it goodwill.  It cracked me up to see all those bargain shoppers!  I loved watching them all go to good homes where they would be appreciated again.

Holiday Gifts Sewing Series: Sweet KM sews the Sweetest Lola Bag

 

 

Today my lovely friend Kristi sewed up a super sweet Lola Owl Bag for her daughter.  Kristi has a fantastic etsy shop for her PDF knitting patterns.  Everytime I visit her shop I kick myself that I don't know how to knit! She is also an accomplished vegetable gardener and gives tons of great tips and recipes on her second blog Morrow Fresh Farms.  Go over and visit her knitting/ sewing space, SweetKM, and check out her adorable Lola.  And stay awhile to admire all of Kristi's talents!