Make your own jack o' lantern!

Geez, I can't believe that September is almost over! But that means Halloween is on its way, one of my favorite holidays! Every year I pick out the nicest pumpkin I can find and make plans to carve it into a super awesome jack o' lantern. Something that would really impress the trick or treaters. And every year, I end up with a rotting, uncarved pumpkin on my front doorstep by Thanksgiving.



This year, I've finally accepted that actual pumpkin carving is just not my thing, so I turned to my trusty yarn and hook and made this little crochet jack o' lantern instead! It's small, fits into the palm of my hand, and won't get all moldy and mushy. A win all around! Now you can make an everlasting pumpkin too with the new Design a jack o' lantern kit in my shop!



Like all my other kits, this one comes with everything that you need to make the project. The kit also comes with a crochet booklet that teaches all the basic stitches, so if you don't know how to crochet, this is a great stepping stone! You can choose to do either an open or closed mouth and there's an assortment of eyes along with some pink cheeks. Go with traditional triangle eyes or mix it up with round eyes and cheeks, or even do one round and one triangle eye. Celebrate the fall season with some yarn and crafting! Happy crocheting!

Vote for The Pudgy Rabbit!

I'm very excited to announce that The Pudgy Rabbit is a finalist for the 2014 Martha Stewart American Made Awards! Yay!!  A big thank you to everyone for their support so far! The American Made Awards is a program that honors American makers and small businesses across several fields such as crafts, design, food, and style. The Pudgy Rabbit was entered into the Crafts category under fiber crafts. There are ten award winners to be named, nine of them will be chosen by the judges and one by the audience!

Voting for the Audience Choice Award begins today and continues until October 13th. The registration process to vote is a bit tricky, so I've outlined the steps below. Once you've registered, you can vote up to six times a day, every day until the 13th!

1. Visit my American Made profile page on the Martha Stewart website here or you can click on the American Made badge on the upper right of this site. Once on my profile page, click on the vote button underneath my profile picture.

2. You'll then be prompted to register either through Facebook or email. The Facebook verification doesn't appear to be working currently, the site is a bit buggy, probably because today is the first day for voting. It should be resolved soon!

3. If registering through email, you'll enter your name and email address, then you'll receive a verification email shortly.

4. After verifying your email, you can start voting! You can vote up to six times a day every day until voting closes on October 13th.

After voting, please don't forget to share to Facebook and Twitter to help spread the word! All of your support has been really great and I can't thank you enough. Here's to taking The Pudgy Rabbit all the way!

Fresh Apple Cake

A few weeks ago at a family bbq, my aunt told me how one of her favorite desserts was this apple cake that a friend would make her every fall. Seeing as how the apple is New York's state fruit and I live close to several orchards in my area, I decided to come up with my own recipe for this apple cake!

American Made Awards

So I entered this year's Martha Stewart American Made Awards, whoooo! It's a contest that highlights small businesses and local, handmade products here in the U.S. Besides a lot of great exposure, there's a chance to win some prize money and tickets to the American Made summit. The summit will be a big networking event with Martha Stewart and her team, featuring talks by industry experts and a chance to meet with other creative entrepreneurs.



As the Pudgy Rabbit is in its baby stage, I thought that this contest would be a great opportunity to help move the shop forward, hopefully getting my crochet kits into some brick and mortar stores and branching out into other crafts such as sewing and needle felting!

To check out my profile and share my nomination, you can click here or click the American Made badge on the upper right of this site. The more shares I receive over Facebook and Twitter, the better my chances are of winning a wild-card finalist spot for grand prize consideration.

Thank you and here's to getting The Pudgy Rabbit out there! =)