This upcoming weekend Milk & Honey Market is throwing two holiday celebrations: a Holiday Pop-Up Shop on Sunday at their West Philly store at 45th and Baltimore and Winterfest on Saturday at their Center City location at Sister Cities Park (18th St. and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway). Annie Baum-Stein, the owner, invites her West Philly neighbors to both events.

Winterfest will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and includes a lot of fun holiday activities for the whole family – a Treasure Hunt, Karaoke sing-a-long with Frosty the Snowman, and holiday arts and crafts. The event will kick off with a choir performing songs of the season. Throughout the day children will enjoy Story Art, Snowflake Science, Cold Weather Creatures, and cookie decorating. This page has a full schedule.

For Sunday’s Pop-Up Shop held at 11:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. in West Philly, Milk & Honey partnered with local artist/craft team Fennec Designs (many will recognize their wares from VIX Emporium or Go West Craft Fests) who have invited their neighborhood artisan friends to participate. In addition to the pop-up gift shop, Build-Your-Own gift baskets and Cookie decorating kits will be on tap at the event.  You can purchase anything in the store for a gift basket and receive the gift packaging and a custom gift card free.

And here are some examples of locally grown or made gift items:

Urban Apiaries Honey, unusual bitters, shrubs and syrups for cocktailers, Beer Kits for Home Brewers, local artisan made kitchen accessories, art works and beeswax candles, a great assortment of cookbooks and of course lots of delicious edible gifts!

People hanging out in the new Sister Cities Park near Logan Circle at 18th and Benjamin Franklin Parkway can now get a little taste of West Philly.

Milk and Honey Market opened a satellite cafe at the revamped park in a building that also includes a welcome center. West Philly resident Jules Dingle designed the single-story building, which includes walls of windows, a green roof and an inviting outdoor space. Those who know design have noted that the building’s low-slung, limestone design makes an interesting transition from the nearby high rises to the small parks around Logan Circle.

Sister Cities Park, which officially opened yesterday, also includes a children’s garden where kids can splash in a small pond and climb rocks. Plan Philly has a nice rundown on the park’s design and construction here.

Several pickpocketing incidents have been recently reported at Milk & Honey Market (4435 Baltimore Ave), prompting attention from the University City District patrols and police. At least four wallets appear to have been taken from briefly unattended coats and bags at Milk and Honey since late December.

In response to the incidents, Milk and Honey owner Annie Baum Stein wrote today:

“Please be aware that there is a pick pocket frequenting Milk & Honey. As far as we know four wallets have been stolen since the holidays. It seems in more then one instance the wallets were in coat pockets and the coats where on the back of chairs. We have contacted the police and the UCD.

We have security cameras and will be providing the police with the footage. We will do everything we can to return our store to being as safe as possible. In the mean time please look out for your personal belongings and please look out for each other.

Officers from the 18th district will now add a stop at Milk & Honey during their daily rotations and sign a log book held at our cash register. We have posted security camera signs and will post security signs provided by the UCD soon.

Please do pass it on to your friends and neighbors and any other neighborhood listserves.

Thank you to those who have already brought this to our attention and if anyone else thinks they were robbed at Milk & Honey please let us know right away.”

We were honored to be featured along with Milk and Honey Market‘s Annie Baum-Stein earlier this week on Madame Fromage, a top-shelf Philly cheese blog.

The good Madame is featuring blue cheese all this month and when asked where one might find a nice hunk of blue we first thought of Milk and Honey at 45th and Baltimore. As Madame Fromage mentions in the post, we sometimes like to pair blue cheese (and a variety of pickled things and black bread) with some icy cold vodka.

You might see Madame Fromage, who also goes by Tenaya, on any given day or night at any number of local cheese venues. She also writes a regular cheese column for Grid.