Friday, December 9, 2011

Christmas Open House

From right to left are Margaret, Gitta, Ietje, Mary, Monika, and myself.
Gitta's annual Christmas Open House is an "all hands on deck" kind of event.  It is the busiest Saturday of the year at the shop, with stitchers both locally and further away dropping in for some Christmas cheer, goodies, and shop specials.  The Open House is our opportunity to say "Thank you" to all our customers.



In preparation for the Open House, the shop is decorated, with a touch of Christmas throughout the store.  In the shop window, the stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and the Christmas tree is decorated with stitched ornaments of Christmas' past.













The front counter is decorated with ornaments of Christmas present.  Every year there are great ornaments to be found in magazines, the Mill Hill collection, which we stitch them on fabric rather than perforated paper, and there aren't many that we can resist.   We stitch as many as we can, with Mary stitching the most, and I then try to finish them into ornaments in time for the open house.
At the back of the shop was our goody table with lots of munchies.  Back by popular demand from last year's favourites were my dad's hummus, and my sister's guacamole.  There was also a selection of "can't resist" crackers, a spinach dip and Christmas squares and cookies.
To make this year's Christmas even more special I designed my own Christmas ornament.   We then prepared  kits that included the fabric, threads and charm.  The kit, a few other Christmas Freebee charts, and a chocolate completed our Christmas gift to everyone that came to the Open House.   As not everyone was able to drop by for whatever reason, I would still like to make this chart available to all of you.  Click here for a small Christmas gift from one stitcher to another.  Merry Christmas.


At the Open House we also revealed a  Christams themed 15 sided Biscornu.  This biscornu is designed by a local designer, Sam Calderone of Snow Dragon Designs.  She will release it in April 2012, by making it her gift to all those retreaters attending  Gitta's Getaway.

Many more photos were taken to remember the day, and if you would like to view the entire album here is the link to my facebook page.  Enjoy!!

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