Crafternoon: Festive Fall Style

Classy Halloween
Cheese Things

So, I like to host this occasional little gathering called Crafternoon. It's a chance for my lady friends and I to get together without dudes, without kids, without pets...without responsibilities, really. It's a time for cheese and onion dip and chocolate and wine and movies and girltalk. And occasionally, crafting. Basically, it's awesome.

I've decided that now that I have this great-for-hosting home, and it's finally in a place where it's easy to host people (aka: the living room is not filled with boxes), I'm going to make Crafternoon a more regular occurrence. Maybe even monthly. Watch out.

This Saturday, I hosted four girlfriends, most of which had never actually met each other, and it turned out to be the most fabulous Crafternoon yet! Y'all know I love a theme, and I went with "Classy Halloween"/"Fall.  I kept the food and decor to colors that seemed appropriate, especially the cheese (sage derby, chocolate cheddar, brie with an orange-colored rind, cinnamon toscano, goat with fig jam...and pumpkin fondue). And of course, I included my classic onion dip with carrots and potato chips. I even baked bread (garlic rosemary, more on that bread later this week), which turned out to be delicious with the fondue. Not that that's too surprising ;)

The spread.

The fondue. Baked in a pumpkin. 

The pumpkin brownies.
And the 2nd table centerpiece.

There was hat-knitting and photo-printing and art-framing and and secret-gift-sewing and jewelry-making and Halloween-costume-creating! I'm seriously impressed with us for the amount of crafting we accomplished. Oh, and we watched Magic Mike. So there's that.

I think the next one will be at the end of November, to work on the post-Fall, pre-Winter crafts. I have this in mind, myself (though I have a ton of ideas right now).