A Handmade Birthday Exchange

Today is my bestie, Jen's birthday. Happy birthday Jen!!! She is exactly 9 days younger than me, our maiden names are almost exact and even our social security numbers are nearly matching! It was meant to be... We'll be friends forever.

To celebrate our birthdays this year, we decided to make it a challenge. We could only spend $10 and it had to e a gift from Etsy.

Sounds easy? Not until you actually begin sorting through Etsy. There is soooo much stuff that it's completely overwhelming. Unless you know what you want, it's hopeless. And even if you know what you want, there's so much to choose from that it takes hours to narrow down your options.

It was fun.

Jennifer is a great cook... She wanted to start a cooking blog but hasn't gotten around to it yet. (I'm waiting!). And she's also a wonderful hostess. She has a small cupcake hobby/business on the side called "the Cupcake Boutique". So I thought thy the perfect gift for her would be... An apron.

My search began. I looked at EVERY Etsy store that sold aprons. What I discovered was that full sized aprons were usually $30 and up. Remember we had a $10 limit. So my search was narrowed down again to half aprons.

I looked and looked but everything $10 and under was either ugly, flimsy or cheap looking. I kept on looking and finally I found it! The pattern, adorable. The quality, thick. The price, perfect... $10 even. I contacted the seller and got one on the way immediately.

The shop is called Aprons by Monica and it's a new and small shop.  She's got lots of cute stuff and they're all reasonably priced.  This is the one I bought for Jen.

I think she loved it...

Jen bought me a beautiful pair of music note hair pins, but I don't know which store she got it from.

It was a Happy Etsy Birthday to us!