Apple Butter

Today I made apple butter with my Grandma! My Grandma is the stereotypical Grandma. Very sweet, always loving, and always trying to feed you something! She taught me how to sew when I was 6, and now she is teaching me how to can! Here is what we did, and the steps involved!

1. Peel, core and cut the apples. We used a little contraption that peeled, cut and cored the apples at once.

2. Put all the apples in a pot and fill with water so that it just covers the apples. Cood for about 20 minutes or until the apples are soft.

3. Take the cooked apples and blend them up until they are smooth.

4. After all the apples are blended, add sugar, cinnamon and cloves. For the sugar you add 1 cup of sugar for every four cups of apples. I had 12 cups of apples so I added 3 cups of sugar. Then I added about 3tbs. of cinnamon and 2 tsp of cloves.

5. Next cook it on medium heat for about 20 minutes.

6. We used a canning steamer. We put the lid on top and once it started steaming we set the timer for 20 minutes. After that we were done! And we have apple butter!!!!!!!!

FREE photo books!

I am getting ready for Christmas and I have already gotten 4 of these photo books! Your first one as a new customer can be FREE! Here is an example of one of the books I made.

Pic from my phone so not great

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Dog Halloween Costume

Gabe and I got our sweet pug Gus Gus before we were married. He is a beast of a pug... Probably the biggest one I have ever seen! Before we had Thomas, he was our only child, so I made him a halloween costume! He was a pirate! Here is our happy pug in his costume.

Our big big boy

Cutest dog pirate I have ever seen!

Told you he was huge!

Giant Pumpkin!

This is my first year of growing a garden, and it has been a learning experience! I didn't realize how big some plants got, or what other plants needed to survive. I planted ONE pumpkin seed, and that little seed turned into a giant plant that took over my entire garden! Gabe has been trying to groom it, but it is crazy. From my crazy huge plant I got ONE GIANT PUMPKIN! We weighed it and it weighs 61 pounds! It was fun to have a pumpkin, but that dang plant killed a lot of other plants from getting so huge! Needless to say next year I will not be planting a pumpkin.

Re-purpose old sweater to hat!

I stayed awake a long time last night thinking of this project! I made myself a hat from an old sweater dress I had in my closet. First I just cut out a hat shape in out of the dress, and then sewed the sides together.

Apparently I am into rosettes lately, but they are so easy and fun!

VERY easy fun project! Just find an old sweater, cut it into hat shape and then decorate!

Second Clock

In the before pictures of my clock tutorial post, I posted two clocks. Here is what the bigger clock ended up as:

I painted the outer rim red, used some of my scrap book paper for the middle. Subtle polka dots in the back, of course! :)

Close up of my flower design

Gnome Costume Complete!

Today while Thomas napped I was able to complete his gnome costume! I am so excited about how it turned out!

The back of my little gnome! I love the fur on the legs

I was trying to get him to stand next to our little gnomes out front

He is such a doll. What a good little boy God blessed us with.

 

Clock Tutorial

Today I was looking through my stash of things I have in a pile I want to do something with, and I found these clocks!

I got them both at a thrift store for less than $2. Both of the clock mechanisms worked fine, so they just needed some decorating

I started by taking the clock apart.

Then I took the pieces outside and painted them. My husband LOVES when I paint on the grass! :)

Next I found the paper that I wanted to use for the inside of the clock, and traced the old clock face on the back of the paper.

I had a bunch of stick on letters in my scrapbooking stash, so I decided to use those for the numbers.

Then I snapped the whole clock back together and here it is! I think I will be putting this up in our bedroom!

Preview of Halloween Costume for THOMAS!

Well, last year my little man was a chef for halloween because he wanted to be like his daddy! I think he is the cutest little chef I have ever seen!

I didn't know if I would be able to top last year! So this year, Thomas is going to be a gnome. I have seen a few gnome costumes in the store, but I am making his and it is going to be very different than the store! Here is the pattern I am getting my ideas from:

I LOVE the little gnome! This pattern was $15 and I was not willing to spend that, so I am going to wing it. I made his shirt yesterday and here is a little preview of that.

The shirt! (Right now it is probably big enough to fit my 3 year old nephew, but soon I will shrink it to size!)

Trial Beard. It isn't nearly as fluffly as the one int he picture, but I will see what I can do! I am going to attempt to finish the costume tomorrow and have him try it on! We have a lot of little gnomes in our front garden area so I want to get Thomas to stand in the dirt with them and get a picture!

Shirt Makeover up close!

I was really excited about my green shirt that I added stuff to, so I had Gabe take a picture of me in it today! I cut the neckline of the shirt so it was a little wider and not so crew neck. I really love this shirt!