Decennial MHICTY: What's Cooking?

Hey Good Lookin'? What's Cookin'?

Welcome to the third installment in the My House Is Cuter Than Yours 10 year blogiversary retrospective and more!

Today we are taking a spin back to 2006 where a fellow friend, Sarah, and I started our own swap! 

The best swap that could ever be! An Apron and Recipe card swap!

"Why, it's a friendly little apron swap and recipe exchange!  This swap is as easy as sewing up an apron and gathering some recipes to be put on homemade cards for another such domestic as yourself.  Piece of cake, right? And to spice things up a bit each swap has a distinctive theme.  So, please, won't you join us and be our guests at our little swap party?"

Sarah and I met through flickr and shared a love of vintage housewife-ness and of course, aprons! 

Swaps were very popular and we wanted to have one with our interests being addressed!

Sarah and I called ourselves the hostesses of the party/swap.  Part of the fun was you had to keep it a secret from the person you were making for, but we encouraged stalking their blog to find out more about them.

The first theme was called "Tried and True".  

The apron needed to be utilitarian and the recipes made from basic ingredients. 

Here is the apron I made for my person whose name was Mary Ann.  She and I became pretty good friends and had the same birthday!  She was also into vintagey stuff so it was fun making these items for her.

 As with all swaps, adding a little extra in the package is always fun.  I made a matching headband as the little bonus.

The Recipe Cards

The requirements of the swap were to send along 2 recipes that you have found to be "tried and true".  Mine were for Cucumber Salad and Chicken with Rice.  The added bonus I made for this set was a recipe card cook book with plastic sleeves to place the cards (and future ones) in.  I covered the front with fabric left over from the apron and attached a print of a vintage 'in the kitchen' image.

The apron I got was from one of my favorite bloggers, Amanda Button.  She has a real knack with embroidery.  The apron's previous life was a skirt Amanda said she wore at punk shows in mosh pits. Cool!! Off to the left you see the chain wallet feature? It has measuring spoons on it!  So fun!

Amanda sent me a slew of extra stuff too...5 recipe cards, a matching pot holder, a bonus vintage apron, and a bunch of cds of saucy music from the 1920/30/40's.

Best to go to this here post to see everything!

The What's Cookin' Apron and Recipe Swap ran for three rounds.  I was a part of the first round completely (helped with the swap details and participated in the swap).  I started back to school during the second round so I dropped down to just assisting with the details.  At the last round I had to bow out completely due to my school load.

The swap was a lot of fun and good memories.  Sarah and I are still friends.  We don't keep in close contact but it's one of those things that if I sent her an email now we would just pick up like it was yesterday!

If you venture to the sidebar on the right of this blog you can still see the working archaeological remains of the What's Cookin' link button still present today.  I have no plans of removing it from it's natural habitat.

Next up...a reason to wear an apron, bib, or trash bag!