from Jessie Steele fine hostess aprons…
These two ladies have redesigned the vintage apron to be cool again! Jessie Steele’s vintage-inspired, hostess and kitchen aprons prove true the old adage that beauty and style are timeless. Influenced by the romantic visions of a bygone era, and designed in vibrant colors, flirty patterns and figure flattering shapes, these fine quality, retro-chic cooking aprons make the perfect fashion accessory in or out of the kitchen.
From hobby to new business venture…
Helena had collected 20th Century vintage aprons for years. She has about 50 to date. She has searched vintage stores all over the country for them. We both felt that people were nesting more and spending more time with their families, and cooking / entertaining plays a major role. We thought, “why not look cute while you do it?” And the aprons on the market at that time were utilitarian mainly, and non-flattering. So we decided to bring back the hostess apron, a lost American tradition.The response has been overwhelming and by our first trade show we knew we had a winner. Some people were shocked as the stigma of the apron was still a bit negative at the time, but we felt that there were women out there who enjoyed this portion of their lives and we wanted them to look great!
The original…
Their company was named after Helena’s mother and Claire’s grandmother, Jessie Steele. Her philosophy for creating a really warm welcoming environment was very inspiring. She always made you feel welcome in her home. She was a forward thinking woman who was sophisticated in her world view. She looked on people and situations without judgment, and she had great understanding of human nature which she passed on to us through stories every time we came over for tea and cake.Mother and daughter team…
Helena shared her vision with Claire, her daughter, a former model and fashion expert. Helena proposed that they bring their talents together to create vintage aprons that would both reflect the retro whimsy of the 1940’s and 50’s and meet the challenging needs of today’s woman. Claire enthusiastically agreed, and Jessie Steele fine hostess aprons was conceived.Updating an American taboo…
We wanted to update these great aprons that Helena had collected, but keep their 40’s and 50’s vintage aesthetic. After spending over a year researching and developing our plans, exploring a wide variety of fabrics and prints, designing their own textiles and finessing cuts and styles, we began manufacturing the line of vintage kitchen aprons. We have added a contemporary twist to the old fashioned hostess apron by updated the prints and silhouette to fit today’s woman. — Vintage Shopping Guide
So this week, I’d love to have a lucky reader win their choice of one of these aprons! The following aprons are called “Sweethearts” (red), “Leopard” (brown), “Pink Poppy Fields” (pink), and “Cafe Toile” (white/black). Read on to find out how you can win one of these!
Some guidelines:
– Giveaway is only for those who live in the United States. My apologies to my international readers!
– You must have a valid email address so that you can be contacted if you win.
To enter the giveaway, leave a comment answering:
– What was the messiest experience you had in the kitchen either cooking or baking? What did you make?
Deadline: Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 12 midnight CST.
One Winner will be randomly chosen by Random.Org’s Interger Generator based on the number of your comment and will be announced on May 1, 2009. Good luck!
Any type of baking that I do, I tend to get flour all over me! I really can’t think of a specific extremely messy instance, though. 🙂
I love those aprons – great giveaway!
What a wonderful giveaway!!! These are beautiful aprons!
I don’t think there was 1 time that was more messy then the rest, but I will say that I get the messiest in the kitchen when I make sugar cookies…the flour and dough everywhere, then it comes time to frost and that tends to get messy too! But it’s worth it! 🙂
Beignets, by far, are the messiest things I’ve ever made. Between the oil for frying and the powdered sugar for dusting, every surface in my kitchen was covered. It was totally worth it, though. 🙂
So cute!! It seems to be the messiest for me when I deal w/ batter because my arms end of covered in it. I pretty good at cleaning up the kitchen as I go.
Making buttercream for the first time! I remember dumping all the powdered sugar in at once and there was a cloud. My kitchen was sticky for a couple weeks, as I will still finding spots I missed!
I don’t remember what exactly I was making at the time, but I was chopping veggies and sliced right through my finger. My immediate reaction was to shake my hand (because somehow that makes the pain go away, you know) 🙂 Anyways, my husband said it looked like a crime scene in the kitchen. Blood all over the walls, cabinets, doors, tile, etc. It was everywhere!
I’m not sure about the messiest, but the funniest mess was the cake that my mom and I made. It was out of America’s Test Kitchen’s best of the year book, and it rose right out of the pan. It was so light and fluffy that the little drippings cooked on the wires in the oven, and looked like little popcorns. My mom and I were a laughing mess when this cake was finally out of the oven. My husband, brother, and Dad were over in the living room wondering what was going on. We ended up telling the story by serving them the puffed up drops from the cake (that were really good).
Needless to say, the rest of the oven was a disaster!
Latkes. The starchy potatoes, grease for frying, way more than my cuisinart could hold…major mess! Love these aprons!
What a cute idea! And I can’t wait to see everyone else’s messy kitchen stories.
My top messiest kitchen would have to be one of the first times I used my new range. Turns out the knobs for the burners didn’t have quite the same settings as the old one. Sauces spattering, pasta pots boiling over, grill pan much hotter than desired… eek!
Second would be the first time I did Christmas baking in my own kitchen. I was not vigilant about cleaning up as I went or measuring carefully, and my kitchen (including myself!) looked as if the panrty had exploded by the time I was done. But those cookies were darn good!
My messiest experience was the first time I made a Lemon Meringue Pie. I must have dirtied a hundred dishes.
I hope I win! I want that toile apron.
I think my cherry pie incident was probably the most messy. The picture in my blog looks bad, but it was WORSE! The pie went all over me and the walls. It was awful… and hilarious 😉
Hmm.. the first time I made meringue cookies I ended up with melted egg white all over the cookie sheet and the bottom of my stove. It was incredibly difficult to clean up!
I’m usually messy with flour when baking, I get it all over myself…but the worst was on the past Christmas and I was very sick, when I made gorilla bread in a loaf pan because I didn’t have a bundt pan…the sugary goo in it bubbled up, over and all over the bottom of the oven, filling our condo with horrible stench and smoke…I just broke down in tears!
Biscuits. I used a “no-fail” recipe that completely failed. I had a huge sticky mess all over me, my counters, and ultimately my trash can. My husband still makes fun of my “club hand”.
I am a mess when I make my all-day stovetop marinara.
Red spots all over!
Fun!
One time i was making tomato soup and i put the soup in the blender to puree and i put too much in and it blew the top off and some of the soup!
I thought it would be really fun to make homemade pasta for a dinner party. I had the dough ready to roll and cut – but wanted the guests to see that part of the dinner prep. The pasta needs a lot of flour to keep it from sticking together – so flour was everywhere. What really sealed the deal though- washing the FLOURED dishcloths without getting all of the flour off. I’m still pulling flour balls off of my laundry. Flour and washing machines DO NOT MIX. I could have used an apron…
It was the first time I made a cake in my Kitchen Aid, I added the flour while it was mixing and ended up with it ALL over my kitchen, it was quite the mess.
I had quite the failure making gnocchi once. Luckily it wasn’t the first time, or else I’d never want to try it again!
Making Christmas cookies, beacuase I am baking all day long! When I am done the kitchen looks like a bomb went off in there!
Probably when I made dirt cake- i had pudding/mousse and oreo crumbs all over the darn kitchen.
i scrubbed and scrubbed and 2 days later i still found oreo crumbs on my stove!
Um definitely brownies. I managed to turn on the mixer en route to the batter and it went everywhere. Not a fun cleanup.
I’m usually pretty good at cleaning while baking, but the first time I made Pioneer Woman’s lasagna, I got overly excited and filled the dish to the brim. Needless to say, the cheese and sauce oozed out of the dish and splattered on the bottom of my brand-new oven. I was SO unhappy since it was a new appliance!
evitawylie at hotmail dot com
making homemade rolls that were way to sticky and I kept touching stuff so there was evidence of the rolls everywhere.
Pretty much everytime I use flour,constarch and cornmeal- my kitchen looks like a white disaster zone. The most recent indcident was last week when I made whole wheat pita bread. It took forever to clean up!!
I was making chocolate bowls using melted chocolate, and balloons. You dip the balloon in, then upend the balloon in a glass while it dries and hardens – and then pop the balloon and peel it away. You are left with a chocolate bowl!
Well. You REALLY need to cool the chocolate a little. Hot chocolate will actually burst your balloon – and the chocolate will be splatted all over you, your kitchen and your living room (if you have an open plan home). You will find chocolate in places you never expected to. Months and months later!!!!
I think my messiest experience in the kitchen was my Pampered Chef party I had last weekend. My kitchen is tiny and I had 8 people trying to cook and share in the fun!
Those are adorable.
I make a mess every time I fry something. One of the first times I did, it was pork chops, I destroyed the entire kitchen and ended up with second degree burns on my stomach! Big mess.
I think my messiest experience was when I was turning 16 I wanted a cake. My parents told me if I wanted a cake, I would need to make it myself. So, I did. And it got all over the kitchen and me. LOL
The first time I made risotto I burned the butter. So I put the pan in the sink and got out a new one. When I went to wash my hands, the cold water sent the hot butter all over my kitchen, living room and dining room. It even got the ceiling pretty good. I actually had to repaint my kitchen after that one…
Frosting – hands down – just this friday I did Day-Glo cupcakes and I had Hot Pink, Hot Green, Hot Yellow – every HOT color all over my kitchen!
i made green pancakes once, before i had my deep KA mixer…and the green batter splattered everywhere in the process. it took days to find all the spots of green.
It wasn’t a very “foodie” experience, but I once took a frozen pizza out of the oven and promptly dropped it on the floor. Messy and I ruined dinner!
Those aprons are adorable!
My messiest experience has to be the first Thanksgiving we hosted in our new home as a married couple.
Thanksgiving is a mess to begin with, but then put 2 amateurs in the kitchen and it’s really a mess. We had turkey drippings, mashed potatoes, and homemade gravy just everywhere. And then when we went to take the bird out of the bag for carving, the drippings spilled everywhere. But the messiest part happened just as we were sitting down to eat… the last dish was finishing in the microwave – creamed onions. (and yes, I know make them from scratch instead of microwaving the frozen ones, but I wan’t a cook back then!). I opened the microwave door and my husband reached in to get them. The dish was hot so I was ready with a hot pad when the onions fell to the floor. Cream sauce everwhere, including all over my stove, under the stove, between the stove and countertop (you know, that tiny tiny space), and in the spaces on the actual stove.
We cleaned for months. We got rid of the stove 2 years later and when they took it out, there was still some crusty creamed onion cream on the back sides!
That’s an easy one – the biggest mess happened when I let a professional chef cook Christmas Eve dinner in our home. He left an industrial sized mess that took 2 days to clean up!
love the aprons!
messiest… first time i used my food processor. yea i didn’t read the directions figuring i watch enough food tv to know how to work it… apparently not. the pineapple and mangoes i was pureeing for sorbet wound up all over the counter and floors. it was a big sticky mess!
When I was about 9 years old and my sister 7, we decided to bake our Dad a chocolate birthday cake from scratch. Mom was at work and I can’t honestly tell you where the sitter was because I don’t remember any adult supervision. Needless to say we and the kitchen were a huge mess.
The messiest thing I ever made was red velvet cake. The red colored cake got everywhere in the kitchen. The sink looked like a crime scene with red all over the dishes and pans.
when i was a kid, my best friend and i decided one morning to make pancakes. we had batter on the ceiling! i have left pancake making to my hubby now…
The time I dropped 5 dozen, yep, 5 dozen eggs on the floor. It turns out my two great danes love raw eggs. (they didn’t eat all 5 dozen). What was I making, you ask? Nothing. We just eat 5 dozen eggs every two or so weeks. No, I have not had my cholesterol checked lately.
Anytime I have to use flour to roll dough out in. I have the typical apartment counter space so it can be quite a mess!
My messiest experience in the kitchen was when I tried to make fried ice cream like the one we’d had at a local Mexican restaurant. It had just a light, crispy coating (like sweetened cereal). So, I heated up a pot of oil, scooped out the ice cream in large balls and rolled it in a cereal coating that I made up. The I put it into the pot.
Uh-oh! The oil immediately welled up and overflowed and caught fire! Fortunately, my husband was there to save the day (and the kitchen of our rental apartment!) – I have NEVER tried to make fried ice cream again. NEVER AGAIN.
These aprons are great! Without a doubt, the messiest thing I have ever made is fondant (to cover cakes). By the end of the process, I have powdered sugar in my hair, on the floor, all over my clothes, and up my nose (imagine a large cloud of powdered sugar settling on everything). Cameras are banned in the kitchen during that time!
Those aprons are ADORABLE! I always get pretty messy when I’m making pot stickers. I end up having filling all over the counter, water spilled from sealing them all….and then my countertops are all gunky! But they’re delicious!
I’d to defer this question to my husband – lucky for me, he does all the cleaning of the kitchen so he would be most qualified to choose my messiest mess! However I do love an apron, in particular whenever I make homemade pasta or fry anything!
Making BREAD!!!!!! IT’s so sticky, and since I’ve had 3 failed attempts…not worth blogging about. My yeast had died in my slightly overheated oven…I thought it was okay to knead…still a yucky mess to clean up on my kitchen island…the dough got everywhere in my nails. GROSS!
BUT I DO LOVE THESE APRONS, just adorable!
So CUTE!
I think mine would probably be a tie between making Dorie Greenspan’s Cherry Cobbler – I didn’t have a cherry pitter, so I used chopsticks. Hours later, my kitchen looked like someone had been murdered and my hands were stained red for days! – And chocolate pudding – I was making it in the food processor and somehow it leaked out everywhere, so I had sticky “pudding juice” all over my cabinets, countertops, floor and self. It was a MESS!
-Amy
http://www.singforyoursupperblog.com
These aprons are so adorable!!!!
I bought a hand mixer and it was on super speed, when I tried to make a cake the sugar and butter flew everywhere!!!
Great looking aprons!
The messiest thing that I can remember didn’t fully happen in the kitchen, but it’s food related. My husband was working a really long shift one day. The wives of the workers sometimes brought food, and I decided that I would make them some fabulous homemade spaghetti. Everything went fine and I set the spaghetti on the floorboard of my car. The lid was not as secure as I had thought. I had to slam on my breaks at one point, and spaghetti went EVERYWHERE in my car. It took forever to clean the sauce from my floorboard, and my car smelled horrendous for the longest time!
One of the more recent incidents that comes to mind was when I got my KA stand mixer. I have watched cooking shows a million times on TV and they always tell you to start on a low speed when you are mixing things like flour, etc. Not like this isn’t common sense to begin with. Well, the first time I used my mixer I totally wasn’t even thinking and what did I do….turned it to medium or so and caused the flour to fly all over me! I am like, I cannot believe I just did that!! I know better, lol.
I don’t remember what exactly I was making but I was definitely baking something. I think it may have been cookies.
Popcorn! Can you believe it? Burned butter + bad plan to pour it into a jar = shattered jar. Glass and hot butter flying everywhere! Sadly I didn’t escape that one without the scars to prove it. Thumbs down!
I made a mess when I made custard mochi for the first time. The speed on my kitcheaid was way too high and batter splattered everywhere.
I love those aprons specially the brown one…pink and brown together is my favorite color combination.
Let’s see, red velvet cake made my kitchen so messy with all the small containers, bowls, and pans to clean, and the red food dye made me nervous thinking it might stain everything. I only made it once from scratch, boxed mix is absolutely fine when it comes to red velvet cake…tastes the same anyway.:D
Everything I cook or bake leaves my kitchen in a huge mess. I don’t know what the messiest would be…just this last weekend when I was making fondant, I dropped the fondant into the bowl of powdered sugar while I was kneading it, and powdered sugar went EVERYWHERE. I looked like a ghost. 😉
What adorable aprons! I’ve really enjoyed reading all the responses.
My most recent messy experience was cooking in my parents’ house over the holidays. I was making a pesto that had tomato sauce in it. While attempting to measure the amount of sauce I needed over the food processor, it all came out of the jar at once and went all over the place. Not a big deal at our house, but parents’ place is always perfectly clean and it got all over their gorgeous hardwood floors and rugs in the kitchen. Luckily, I cleaned it up pretty quickly!
as others have said, I’m sure it involved an electric mixer and/or blender. but it could be anything at my house. to day I put a full cup of coffee in the dishwasher, wannna guess where the coffee went? and I hate cleaning walls, woodwork, and cabinet doors…….
Mking pumpkin rolls – I had powdered sugar everywhere!!!!
those aprons are so cute!
i seem to make quite the mess w/a lot of TWD recipes!! the messiest one was probably the blackout cake!
beignets were my messiest, too! and, they didn’t even turn out right… 🙁
Definitely making homemade spaghetti sauce! Such. A. Mess. But it’s soooo good and since I don’t make it that often, it’s worth it. I’m actually making it on Thursday!
When my husband and I got married and moved into our brand new apartment I made spaghetti for our first meal. I tried to balance the sauce spoon on the edge of the pot but it didn’t want to stay there. The spoon launched off the pot and splattered spaghetti sauce everywhere – floor, ceiling, walls, and all over us. I put the spoon in the dishwasher and grabbed another one. I did the exact same thing again. After the third one I finally learned my lesson and used a spoon rest.
One time I was making bread, and I dumped all the flour in my mixer (at high speed) at once. Flour got EVERYWHERE!!!
That would definitely be my genius idea of smoothing some cream of asparagus soup out in the blender…without taking the steam into account and the lid busting off allowing the kitchen to be covered with soup as well as my angry self. Let’s just say you only have to learn that lesson once.
Every time I make my cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving, my kitchen looks like a hurricane hit it. I probably use every pan, utensil, cutting board and mixing bowl we own. But, it’s well worth it and my husband craves that stuffing all year. 🙂
My kitchen experience has always been messy. I love to cook, but I always use more utensils than I ever need and I always spill stuff on the stove. My husband gets to clean up though 🙂
I was the weekend cook in college at a dorm for French speaking students. It was my first time using the industrial strength stand mixer and I didn’t have it put together correctly. I turned it on and everything in the bowl went flying around the kitchen. Oops. I learned quickly (still wasn’t as bad as the time I worked at a movie theater and dropped the butter container when cleaning it and hot butter flew 4 feet up the wall. Another oops…).
I tend to be messy any time I bake (which is often!) but probably the worst time was the first time I ever made a layer cake (from scratch) & the buttercream icing to go with it. There was flour & powdered sugar EVERYWHERE by the time the project was over & my fingers were stained from mixing the colors into the icing! It took me days to get all of the nooks & crannies of my kitchen cleaned up & I think my fingers were stained for a whole week! 🙂
Love the aprons!!!
My messiest experience was probably when I was making my Morel Ravioli, Venetian Cookies and GF Buckwheat Bread all at once for Easter. Everything ended up being covered in flour, I was juggling baking with cooking and rolling out the ravioli, I pretty much turned my kitchen into a disaster zone. But it was all worth it! Yeah I am not good at keeping things tidy when multitasking in the kitchen…
My biggest mess was my first time making pizza dough. I had dough stuck to every appliance and all OVER the place. Fortunately, I’ve gotten much better since then.
The messiest time I’ve had in the kitchen has to be preparing dinner for my hubby’s family for the first time.
I was making focaccia bread, blueberry tarts, smothered pork chops and a green bean dish. All of the dishes were prepped/staggered through out the day and my kitchen didn’t recover for quite a while 🙂
I don’t know that I can narrow it down to ONE messiest adventure. I’m a hot mess in the kitchen, especially when baking bread. The flour ends up everywhere, including on the cat. (poor guy- hand him an apron too!)
I was making Mexican chocolate milk for a class and I was trying to pour it back into a container. The container collapsed and I poured a gallon of milk all over the kitchen. My brother saw it all happen and instead of helping me clean up, ran and grabbed a camera to snap photos of me covered in chocolate milk. THAT was messy!! 🙂
Once I went over the liquid line on my food processor, and ended up with pumpkin sauce all over my kitchen!! Guess that line is there for a real reason. I was making pumpkin enchiladas.
My messiest experience was making 200+ sugar cookies as favors for my sister’s baby shower last October. My kitchen was a disaster zone! Flour and sugar were everywhere. Ziploc bags used for icing and drying cookies were taking up my entire dining room. **Phew** I’m so glad that is over. I’m never doing that again!
My messiest experience in the kitchen was making my own salad dressing. I had combined the vinegar, oil, poppy seeds and a few other ingredients in a tupperware container to shake it up. Well, I was shaking the cover came undone! I had the dressing all over my stove, counters, cupboards and the floor. It took quite awhile to get everything cleaned up and not feel greasy!
The first time I made pumpkin pie, I had finished mixing everything together and went to pop the attachments from the mixer to put them in the sink and accidentally hit the “on” button instead of the pop-out button. Pumpkin pie filling was all over me and everywhere in my kitchen. I was still finding little dots of it weeks later!
Tiramisu!!!!! I made my own lady fingers, which turned out fabulous, but the mess in the kitchen was outrageous!!
When I made 5 dozen rolls for thanksgiving dinner this year. Can you say holy flour. But is was fun, and they all turned our really good.
This cake!
https://brooke-cookiejar.blogspot.com/2008/02/piece-of-cake-not-exactly.html
Cake Balls! Geesh…after doing the chocolate, it was all over my counters and I actually think it ended up in my hair! But they were Oh So Good…
I was trying to make a Jello salad and I had mixed the jello, pineapple, mandarin orange slices, and buttermilk in my stand mixer. It was time to add the cool whip (which hadn’t quite thawed…). I put it in and thought it looked a little full, but maybe if I used the paddle attachment and only turned it on low, it would be alright. Did I mention this was about 2 AM and I needed this the next morning? Well, lets just say I (and half my kitchen) ended up orange. And it was SO HARD to clean up. I learned my lesson, though.
Scratch Chicken Pot Pie alsways leaves my kitchen a wreck. Too many pots and pans used.
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Wow, what a giveaway and so sorry I missed it. You can buy Jessie Steele aprons online. My favorite is the Leopard Apron by Jessie Steele. Simply great to see what Claire and Helena have achieved with these aprons.