Crock Pot Apple Butter

 I have always wanted to make apple butter.  I found a link on Pinterest that led me to this sweet blog!  The crock pot provides an easy way to make it!  Core and cut up 20 apples and place them into the crock pot.  I used Braeburn, Golden Delicious and went outside and plucked some sour pie apples off of our tree.  Add 2 cups of apple cider, apple juice, or water.  Cook on low for 10 hours.   Puree (don't liquify!) in the blender and return to the crock pot.  Add 3 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground cloves.  I added a dash of allspice.  Cook on low for one more hour.

 You can process it in a water bath for 10 minutes or freeze it.  It will keep in the refrigerator for a while, but it's so good it probably won't last long!

I put mine into half pint jars for easy gifting.  It filled 17.

Smudge watched me.

 

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥

Blow Out Your Candles

Our son Ethan celebrated his 10th birthday last weekend.  He usually requests a chocolate cake.  :)

Time to blow out your candles!

"Hey, wait a second..." 

They kept re-lighting!  

The more times he blew them out, the funnier it became. 

I think he was getting tired!

Finally!!  

Yesterday was his actual birthday.  Happy Birthday Ethan!

♥♥♥Happy Thursday!♥♥♥

These Guys Rock

Last summer while away at summer camp with the youth group, I collected some beautiful flat island rocks.  They have been sitting in the garage.  Time to paint them!

 

We used a variety of colors.

 Painting along..

It's hard to see, but a friend of mine added each child's name and the word "rocks" to some rocks that she painted with her kids.  I like that!  So each child's rock says that they rock!  Because we used washable paint, I sprayed several coats of shellac over each rock to weather proof them for garden placement. 

I made one, too! 

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥

Flight Of The Bumblebees

I love art that can be played with. We created some paper plate bumblebees yesterday!  To prepare, cut out some black stripes, stingers, and some wax paper wings.

 

In place of paint you can use crayons or chalk.  Don't have wiggly eyes? Draw some eyes on! 

 

The kids painted the underside of the plates yellow. 

 

Add the stripes, stinger, wings and wiggly eyes.   When the paint dries, draw some angry eyebrows. 

 

For fun, draw some angry teeth.  I noticed that the kids ran faster and played harder with their bees when they thought the bees were angry!

 

Here's what I like to do; add a glove!  Any glove will do, these are the non latex kind.  I just stapled at the wrist and on the fingers.

See?  Now the bumblebees can be worn for easy play time.

Bzzzzzz.. Bzzzzzzz...

It's so much more fun when everyone has the same toy. :)

We have noticed a lot of bumblebees in the gardens lately, so this was a great project to invite conversations about bumblebees and what they do. 

♥♥♥Happy Wednesday!♥♥♥

A Real Monday- Eyeroll Alert

Yesterday was the first "real Monday" I have had in a long time!  What I mean by that is that the way most people describe Monday with a snarl, is not how my Mondays usually go.  Fridays are my Mondays.  I could go without Friday all together, actually.  By that day of the week, I am spent!  Mondays are bright and cheery in this house. Then yesterday happened.
 (Insert eye roll HERE.)  

On a good note, two different sources gifted us with fresh rhubarb!  From my sister, and from a man who Adam pulled over after seeing him looking tired and took over mowing his lawn for him at random.  I had about 5 pounds of it, just enough for a rhubarb jelly recipe I had been looking at.  So I got busy yesterday in the morning.  Have you ever squeezed the juice out of rhubarb?  It's tough.  The recipe said to grind the rhubarb and let it drip juice until it measured 3 1/2 cups.  I'm impatient about these things.
I mashed the juice out myself. 

Look at the beautiful color!  

3 1/2 cups rhubarb juice (from about 5 lbs of rhubarb) 

7 cups sugar

2 pouches (3 oz. each) liquid fruit pectin

Bring to boil, stirring constantly.  Add pectin.  Return to full boil for 1 minute.  Remove from heat, pour into jars and seal. 

EASY.  Except that it was Monday and for some reason my jelly didn't set. 

(Insert another eye roll HERE.)

Of course I couldn't go to the store for more pectin because I do not have a vehicle during the day.  Steph was at band camp and I couldn't ask her to run down for me. We are lucky to live so close.  ANYWAY, it killed my OCD all day long to not be able to fix it. 

However, my canning book suggested to reboil it, 4 cups at a time, add 3/4 c sugar, 2 tbsp. lemon juice, and 2 tbsp. liquid pectin.  It worked, half way.  It looks like jelly and acts like jam, but it is delicious! 

Then I decided to fore-go my nap time reading and prime these shutters.  I was taking a sanity risk.

I did not enjoy this task.  It took about two hours, my hand was killing me and the sun was so hot I thought I was dieing but I had already set shop up right there and was too stubborn after the jelly fiasco to move them AGAIN.  Sorry, Stephen King, I will have to join the town UNDER THE DOME at a later time. 

(Great book, by the way.)  

The edges of each slat were the worst to get covered.  I am thankful that I work at home so I could work on this stuff.  I'm also thankful that Monday is over.  Tuesday is like Monday's do-over. 

 Remember the rain we had last week?  All of these flowers in the vase fell over because of it and they actually broke.  Even a mammoth sunflower couldn't take it, I had to tie it up with fishing line.  Pretty!

♥♥♥Happy Tuesday!♥♥♥

Pet Rock

A couple of years ago, we spray painted a pile of rocks orange to use as tiny pumpkins for a song we had been singing.  We've been using the leftovers since then as pet rocks.  For two years now I think.. 

Out came the matchboxes.  The idea is to create beds for our little pet rocks.

They each added a tissue square for the quilt, a foam rectangle for the pillow, and a piece of fabric for the blanket. 

 

There was only so much we could do with a tiny little matchbox, however, small hands like small items to manipulate.  Open the box, put rock to bed, close the box.  Repeat.

They were happy!  I felt resourceful by actually using the  leftover supplies. 

Meanwhile, we are gearing up to paint our house.  I am so excited that I can barely pull myself away from the grunt work to do my day job.  We are in the process right now of priming railings, doors and shutters.  We are painting our white house gray, with white trim and possibly a deep blue door.  Trust me, the color scheme looks great!  Boy am I happy to have a Home Depot excuse.  I love that place!

♥♥♥Happy Monday!♥♥♥

Summer Scrapbooks

I have had a stack of foam scrapbooks sitting in my supplies for a while.  I was saving them for summer.  

It's fun to have a book to write in, but you need a pencil to go with it.  We decided to create snake pencils.  To make one, just twist two pipe cleaners together.

 

Form a head at the top, and add a pipe cleaner tongue.  

 Hot glue some eyes onto the snake and twist onto the pencil.  Snake pencil!

 

How exciting to be able to draw or write in a book of our own!

 

I told the kids that they could also tape their nature finds inside.  Or stick some stickers.  

 

They were suddenly excited to be writing. :)

 

It was hard to put them away for outside time.

 

I made some for my nieces.  Now I just need to get them delivered. 

♥♥♥Happy Friday!♥♥♥