February 4, 2014 by Stephanie

Crockpot Apple Butter

I love my crockpot, so when I saw this recipe I knew it was going to be on the Christmas giving list.

So are you ready to set it and forget it?

Crockpot Apple Butter

Ingredients

1 dozen apples, peeled, cored, cubed
1/2 Cup Water
1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon All Spice

Step 1:

Core and peel apples. Once you cube them put them in the crockpot.

Step 2:

Stir in water, sugar, and spices with apples.

Step 3:

Set it on low and leave overnight. I left it around 16 hours on low. You can shorten this time on high, but I would watch the apples more closely. Even on low, I periodically stirred the apples to break them up faster into the mush.

Step 4:

Once the apples are a mush, stir it to further smooth the mixture. You can put it in a blender to smooth out further. I left it fairly chunky, almost like applesauce.

Step 5:

Put butter into storing containers. This recipe allowed for 6 smaller canning jars.
(I also took this step to taste test it. Yummeeeee. I would eat it by the spoonful.)

You could jazz up the jars with ribbon and labels, but I didn’t quite go that far. These would make a good spread for toast or bagels.

cubed apples

all ingredients

final product

January 28, 2014 by Stephanie

For the Birds

My in-laws love birds and really pride themselves on having a fantastic yard of nature.

They have bird houses and feeders everywhere, and they manage to get some of the coolest birds around their house because of it.

I sat on their deck for probably a half hour waiting for this humming bird. I am pretty satisfied with myself!

They even had dozens of birds come through during the Christmas ice storm.

So when I saw this idea, I knew that it was going to be a great gift. They give them food and shelter, so why not add comfort in there too!

supplies

You need a suet basket which you can find at any store that sells bird seed. They come in various sizes. Since, I didn’t want to get in over my head, I just stuck with a medium to small sized one.

You will also need scraps of yarn. Since I crochet (a LOT), I was able to save tons of scraps for this. I am sure you can just cut yarn too if you don’t use yarn on a regular basis. (You can definitely tell which colors I use most often on my projects-yellow, white, purple, and red.)

You just stuff the scraps into the suet basket. You will need a lot of scraps because they will squish together. I saved over the last year for this. I ended up with two bags, one of which went in the basket initially. I gave the second bag as well as filler once this one is hopefully picked clean.

The end result is an offering basically for the birds to make their nests with this string.

It will be fun to see if this actually worked in the spring by seeing if the nests are now colorful.

Pretty sweet gift!

January 15, 2014 by Stephanie

Homemade Bath Salts

Another homemade gift item. I made these for my step-mom and my aunt.

This one began as an attempt to make these bath bombs, but it turned out to just be salts.

Here is our story. I adjusted the directions to what we did, so if you want the “bomb” part, you need to follow her recipe.

Ingredients:

3 c cornstarch
3 c baking soda
4-5 c lavender epsom salt
1 c lemon juice
blue and red food coloring
muffin tins

Directions:

Combine all ingredients (except food coloring) in a bowl and mix
Add several drops of food coloring to get desired coloring
Press firmly into a muffin tins
Let dry several hours or overnight

Supplies were all purchased at Walmart.

Perfect and ready to be set.

So here is where we went wrong. I scoured several of these bath bomb recipes, and many said you could substitute lemon juice for citric acid. Well my pea brain didn’t translate that lemon juice is a liquid whereas the citric acid is a solid. So that liquid made a dramatic difference on the mold and how it stuck things together. For future reference, if you do substitute lemon juice, dramatically cut the amount. We added more of the dry ingredients to compensate. I estimated how much we put in there since we kind of guessed to make the consistency stick. (And I was in slight panic mode at this point, so I wasn’t thinking clearly about the documenting the measurements…)

Even after sitting for more than 24 hours, the molds did not stay as a mold.

They were like mush.

Sooo, we decided to just keep them as mush and put them in the jars as salts. I will prevail!

I added a scoop to each one so the recipients can easily get enough out for a relaxing bath.

This “recipe” made two of these large jars as salts.

Things to know if you attempt these:

1. Make sure you know what you are doing when you make substitutions.

2. Use silicone molds. Fortunately for this part, we could scoop them out with a spoon, but if they had hardened I am not sure they would have come out as nicely.

3. You will make a big mess and your kitchen will be overwhelmed with the smell of lavender. (Maybe the mess is just me…)

4. You should probably use someone else’s recipe. Just saying.

I will say that these do work though, so if you want bath salts, have at this recipe!

I hope you enjoyed another round of Pinterest vs. Stephanie.

December 31, 2013 by Stephanie

Bath Paints

My nieces are 3 and 4 years old, and I was trying to find something fun and easy to do for them for Christmas.

Enter Bath Paints!

This is pretty easy to do, and serves many roles. I highly encourage anyone who has kids on their shopping lists, to add this activity!

It is fun for the kids, gets them clean, AND gets the tub clean! I may have to use these myself…

I did change the instructions from the woman’s post. They seem to work either way.

Supplies Needed

Baking Soda
Corn Starch
Food Coloring
Kid’s Shampoo
Traveling Shampoo cases

Instructions

I started off with the corn starch and baking soda separate, then decided to combine them when I was adding them to the bottle. The cornstarch by itself will yield a smoother mixture, and the baking soda will have a grainy jello consistency.
You add the shampoo, cornstarch, baking soda, and food coloring in a bowl.
We put the mixture in a Ziploc bag and cut the corner out to squeeze them into the travel tubes.
And then you let the kids play!

All the supplies.

This is when I had them separate. I love watching food coloring do it’s thing.

All my colors.

I made quite a bit. My eyeballing didn’t go over so well. I just put any extra back into the empty shampoo bottles for the rainbow effect. We did only use 2 of the 3 shampoos we bought. The one on the left is still just plain shampoo.We put the corresponding colors in the tubes to make it fun for the girls to “paint” with.

Both of my nieces love to draw so hopefully this goes over well!

December 29, 2013 by Stephanie

Cranberry Cinnamon Honey Butter

My family is really hard to shop for. Most of us, when we want or need something we are in a position where we can just go get it. So Christmas and birthdays become increasingly more difficult as the years go by.

However, one truth remains.

We love to eat.

So when I came across this recipe, I knew I had found at least one gift. I did adjust the recipe a smidge on the measurements.

Cranberry Cinnamon Honey Butter

Ingredients

3 sticks of butter
3/4 cup of dried cranberries
3 tsp of ground cinnamon
3-4 tbs of honey

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in a mixer. I tried a blender first, and it just wasn’t cooperating, so I put it in my Kitchenaid. Worked like a charm
You may need to scrape the sides a few times and mix again just to make sure all the cinnamon is incorporated.
Store in container of choice.
Best when used at room temperature, but will need to be refrigerated between uses.

Somewhat homemade butter in the making

Excuse the mess behind this. We were overlapping several different projects at one time. Our kitchen looked like something exploded.

The recipe doesn’t not yield an exorbitant amount, so just note that if you are hoping to make it for several people. This is how much we got out of the recipe listed above.

I tasted some along the way, and it tastes so good! It would be great on toast and bagels. I kind of want to go out and get raisin bread just for this butter!

It took me about 15 minutes to make this, so it is super easy to whip up.

Do you have any homemade butter recipes?