Cookie Party

Today I hosted my first ever cookie party!  I have been wanting to do this for a few years but have either been too busy, or just not had the right timing/groups of people to do this with.  In my family, it was a tradition to make my grandmothers sugar cookie recipe, frost them, and hand them out to family and friends.  My dad will never let me forget the year that my brother and I both reached into the oven with bare hands to pull out cookie sheets.  And it wasn't like we did it at the same time.  My brother had reached in to grab it and burned his fingers and then shortly after I managed to touch a pan that had just come out of the oven.  Those are the kinds of memories that really stick with you.  :P

For today's event I decided I wanted to recreate the basic idea of the cookie decorating that I used to do, so I made up a batch of grandma's cookies, rolled out the dough, and cut them all out.  I ended up making two batched of cookies so everyone would have the ability to take home a dozen cookies if they wanted.  We had cookies everywhere!  

Playing with the dough and adding flour to make it not super sticky so I could roll it out

Working the dough to get it all rolled out on my way to small counter.  You can see the tub of peanut butter cookies I just had baked yesterday. 

A few samples of the cookies I cut out.  The F-22s were big hits.  Of course some thought it was a two legged Christmas tree or Sponge Bob Square Pants side kick.  :)

The party was really for the ladies to get together and socialize as much as it was to frost and quality control test some cookies.  We had lots of frosting options and decorations to add on.  Our creations were definitely one of a kind.

I think everyone had a pretty good time.  I hope that this can become and annual event.  It reminded me a lot of all those holidays where my family used to do this.  I think it's a nice tradition to have and one that doesn't involve technology gadgets and hi-tech toys; well unless you count my mixer (god help me if I didn't have that!)  I did learn that I probably made too many cookies, but honestly, is this ever really a problem with you live with a cookie monster?

Company Cheer!

One of the perks of Rob's job is being invited to a real office Christmas Party.  This is the first one that either Rob or I had ever been invited to, so we were pretty excited about it.  Not knowing what to wear, we inquired about the dress code and found out people get really decked out for this event.  Nifty! 

His company threw quite the bash at the Hilton near the airport this Saturday.  The party started at 7pm with a proper cocktail hour and mingling.  I was able to meet a lot of Rob's co-workers and other people at the company.  They had nothing but nice things to say about him.  During the cocktail hour, they had a photographer taking free professional photos of everyone that came.  We didn't know they were going to do this, so I took a few minutes to grab a proper photo of us before we left the house.

 

The dinner was really delicious and was followed up with dancing and door prizes.  We didn't win anything, but it was a lot of fun to see others winning.  I guess we are going to have to buy our own TV.  Oh well.  :)

Hung by the Chimney with Care...

Our holiday sewing activities continue with the making of stockings.  Rob and I had set we bought from Target or some place that were the generic red fuzzy stockings which were cute and all, but lacking some personality.  When we bought the material for the tree skirt, we also decided to use the same fabric to make some stockings.  We thought it would be nicer to have homemade ones that we created.  Years from now we will tell our kids, "We made those the first year we were married."  And it will be all "awww" and stuff.

Having made many Halloween costumes without a pattern, I had pretty good confidence I would do it with these as well.  I used an extremely scientific measuring device to make sure I had enough fabric.  I hijacked a store stocking that was completed and flopped it onto the fabric and then flipped it and told her to cut "about there".  I think she was somewhat amused by this tactic. 

I decided to try and document this process through the wonders of digital photography. 

I didn't buy the store model I used to make the initial assessment of how much fabric I was going to need, but I think I did alright.  I mostly followed the stocking we owned (remembering to allow for seams) and made it a little taller.  The fabric we found was amazing on many counts because it was pre-quilted, two sided fabric.  That left a lot of middle steps out once again and allowed me to pretty much just sew them up.

 Then I hired an assistant.  She was more interested in the pin cushion than anything.

Although she did monitor my cutting progress pretty well.  And she kept track of my stockings after I was finished.

Ok, so maybe the cat was a pretty big distraction in my sewing project, but it was totally worth it.

The cut projects look pretty similar to the model.  I guess we are on track here.   I sewed them up with a 5/8" seam and left the tops open.  

Then I decided to cut the top folds of the stockings and add the bias tape.  That stuff is awesome!  What is not shown here is the added embellishment of the gold squiggles again.  After that, I sewed the top part into a circle and lined it up with the base to sew it together.  I am not kidding when I say, this took my 15 minutes to figure out which way to sew this on.  I couldn't for the life of me get the flipping from wrong side to right side figured out because of the fold down of the top part on the right side.  If you understand that, then A+ for you.  Eventually I made it, because I did get a finished product.

I think they turned out pretty awesome and are now completely unique items that will hopefully stay with us for many years to come.  Now if I could find stocking hooks that I actually liked, I think we would be in business!

Holiday Sewing Adventures

For as long as I have owned my tree (now going on 5 years) I have always wanted a tree skirt.  I find this kind of odd because I never had one in my house growing up.  We used to make do (and my parents still do) with a white bed sheet that always serves this purpose.  That aside, I thought it would be relatively simple to find one.  The first year I was just happy to have a tree, so I said, "next year."  Since then it has become the running theme.

Most of the ones I do find fit into one of the two categories; Ugly and/or Expensive.  Since I wanted neither of these things I thought I could wait until the after Christmas sale to find one that was at least Used to be Expensive, but pretty.  It never quite worked out that way.  Oh well.  So here we are at year 5 of putting up my tree (which I love) and I decided I had enough hunting with pitiful results. 

The wonderful thing about owning a sewing machine is you can make most anything you need to if you want to. A quick Google search revealed many options for tree skirts.  I was surprised by how many of them still fell into the Ugly category.  I finally found one that was really generic which was perfect.  I am not sure I am really a Sewing 4 Dummies kind of person, but their pattern/instructions was exactly what I wanted.  Nothing too terribly complicated, but ideally spells out all of the things I would need and did some math for me.  I learned the C=2*pi*r, but I really didn't want to figure it out.  Off to the store we went!

I do have to mention we went on Saturday after Black Friday so I was worried the place was still going to be a zoo/really picked over.  They were having a 3 day sale, so the prices were still really good.  So we wandering to the Christmas fabric and started to browse when Rob spotted some pretty awesome fabric.  It was a doubled sided pre-quilted fabric with shimmery red on one side and shimmery green on the other.  The pattern had said that I would need two fabrics to sew together, but with this one, that step was eliminated.  Wohoo!  We located the bias tape we would need and Velcro to keep it closed.  We even went one step further and found some gold bric-a-brac to run along the edge of it.

I am really glad that my grandmother taught my how to sew all those years ago and that it's a skill I have kept in fairly decent use even today.  So assembling this project together took a couple of hours, but that was all.  The finished result looks better than anything sold in the stores (in our opinion) and it was really easy.

So here's the materials needed:
1 1/4 yards of material for each top and bottom - can be the same fabric (2 1/2 yards total) or different ones
6 yards of bias tape
Velcro Strips - found a package of 2 3"inch long pieces
Appropriate thread

We added 12 yards of gold bric-a-brac found in the ribbon aisle.  We had some left over, which is being used in the matching stocking project.  They also mention adding appliques and other embellishments as you see fit.  Anyone who has even limited sewing skills can pull this off.  :)

Total Cost for Project - $22.50 - Thank you sales and coupons!