Crafty, homemaking vacation.....

This week I am on vacation, and for me that means getting some stuff done. Projects that take some time, and care. New things I've never tried before, or never made time for.

Today is Blackberry Jelly, a second attempt at body wash and hopefully a few small batches of some peach recipes.

So, Blackberry juice is on the stove with sugar, gaining heat and waiting for jars to  sterilize in the water bath. It is shocking how much sugar is called for in the jelly recipe I am referring to...... Shocking! I wish that books, or even the pectin packages would give a ratio, and reasons..... 7 cups of sugar to 4 cups of  juice, really? Even the tome "Joy of Cooking" gives no reason for this craziness.... Also all the recipes ask for fruit in a poundage, but don't list how much juice your going for in cups..... 4 pounds of blackberries made into juice, add 3/4 a cup of sugar. Thanks for that. I have reduced the sugar to 6 cups, it still seems crazy! Since the recipe calls for 2 packages of liquid pectin, i will chance it.

Not much to look at......

After the movement into jars, all it will be is dark purple jelly in jars!

As for the previously mentioned body wash, i was giving a Pinterest idea a shot. There are several pins for body wash on the cheap, basically most of them are: grate 8oz. of your preferred bar of soap, add to 6 cups of water on the stove and melt. Let cool, place in containers, and use. Some call for additional glycerine, some do not. So I bought some lovely smelling cheap, low chemical list in the ingredients bar soap, and grated it up. 

 

It smells lovely! 

The wonderful thing about this method is that you are not using an active lye component, which is the hazard in soap making at home. The bar soap has the lye in it, it 's done it's job and is no longer active. The tough thing is it was really hard to tell what I had at the end of the process yesterday. I thought it hadn't worked. I did not have any glycerine on hand so I skipped it. I had a chunk of soap solidifying on the top of very watery soap. Awesome. No there is no picture. 

So I considered......" Ok, I will go grab some glycerine in the morning, and try again."

I was astonished this morning when the pot was filled with a solid (yet creamy) soap! It was too thick to transfer to containers, so I added some water and put my plan into action. 

It's cooling now. Here's hoping the additional water and 2 teaspoons of glycerine are going to work out! Lol.

Hope you are having a great summer, more to come......

Adventures on the weekend!

This is a delayed broadcast! lol

The adventures that I am referring to are from last weekend.Soooooo

Last weekend was busy for me. There were two early Mother's Day teas on Sunday! My sister her kiddlets, Sam and I spent most of Saturday busy making treats to take with us. Honestly the Kids and Sam were as helpful as they could be but honestly, their attention span is totally lacking. That being said Sam is excellent at floor cleanup.

We worked on three major projects.

The first- not food related. We worked on an upright garden in a shipping pallet

Yes, this was our resulting trip to the nursery. My sister saw the idea on a blog called Life on the Balcony and we both have pretty small backyards with limited gardening space. It is a far cry from the gardens that we grew up with, but anyway to grow fresh veggies and some strawberry plants is a good idea. She mentioned it to me and I got  a pallet from a work neighbor and we made sure that the supplies we needed were in the cart. 

To be honest we did not follow her directions exactly as I mentioned we were using some decorative plants but mostly edibles, and I have no finished photos as it wasn't filled by the two 40 liter bags of soil we used. More photos after the triumphant finish. WE did enjoy making it until the kids had their own meltdowns, but that's what happens at nap time.

The Second- Cake Pops. Yes that's right..... there are tools at the kitchen store for everything!

We mixed up a box of Cherry chip and went to town!

They looked especially interesting after they were dipped in chocolate and fun decorations.

These are cooled off and placed in a container upside-down, so please don't be concerned. WE had a great time! Yes they were yummy. You may want to know that one box of cake mix did all of this plus. I urge you to be going somewhere with these goodies if you make this kind of volume unless you plan on eating them all. Not that there is anything wrong with that plan. Just sayin'

The Third- Candy Sushi....... Stay with me.

See? not so crazy. You are looking at the genius combination of rice crispy squares, gummies and fruit roll-ups. You can find this all over the web right now, but we used Mommyknows as our inspiration. This is also a tutorial. Try it, love it!

Ya we made nigiri too! They were a big hit with the party people and very fun to make.

Turns out Sam likes sushi...... especially with marshmallows.

More knitting content next time. Hope you enjoyed this crafty diversion as much as we did making it. More projects to come I hope.

Planning for a Bounty.

Last year my parents' apple trees were overflowing with apples. My Dad made pies, but eventually ran out of things to do with them. This year in preperation for another large  harvest I began looking over my preserving books ernestly in the summer to decide what we would most likely eat and what I could do with a bounty of apples.

This year there was no apples. That sounds dramatic, there were a few apples but not nearly as many as last year. After the 2010 Winter Olympics we had a cold snap! LOL and alot of plants and trees that were budding early due to the lovely weather in Feburary, lost buds to the cold. Simple as that. 

What is a girl with apple plans to do?

Buy a box of apples from a school fundraiser of course! LOL

Here they are sitting in our cold room. 

And here is what I got up to today.

Apple pear crumble

and apple chips.

Yummy. It`s sad but I am unsure what apples I purchased. I am about 90% sure it was Gala apples. But honestly it could have been another type. They have been the same colour the whole time.
So I still have more apples, I will be making more ships, and I think I will have to make more crumbles, as I already have 3 places that I am taking a desert, and I only made 5 of the little guys! That will be great and I have not decided about apple butter or a apple pie filling. I was certian that I wanted to do canning, but I really don't know anymore. I hesitate as I have not tested a recipe for either I hate to waste my apples.

More on other parts of my weekend later. Hope you had a good one!