Apple Butter

Making Apple Butter is very similar to making applesauce.  You cook down the apples

and puree it in the food processor, just like you would applesauce.

But here is where it changes.  You put the sauce into your crockpot and add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.  Stir and set the timer on low for 4-5  hours.

Be sure to put the lid on, but not all the way.  The lid is on to keep the splatter down and it is cracked open to allow any liquid to evaporate, which is what will make it thick and turn into apple butter.

You can see how the color changes to an almost caramel and how it thickens.

Then put it into your sterilized jars and process.  It is delicious on bread, pancakes or muffins.

Apple Slices

I canned 2 quart sized jars of raw apples.  I chose to can them raw, with the hopes that they will be a bit crisper when I go to use them.  I also didn't add any spices or make a syrup, because I prefer to add fresh spices to my apple pies when I bake them.

To can raw apple slices, all you do it core and peel the apple and then I cut them using an apple slicer to get uniform apple slices.  Pack them into a sterile jar, add boiling water and process in either a pressure canner or water bath.

Applesauce

Yesterday, I showed you how to make chunky applesauce. Today, it is unsweetened smooth applesauce.

Peel, core and dice your apples and cook them down with 1/2 cup of water.

Once the apples are soft, drain out an excess water and put them into your food processor

and puree until smooth.

Put it into your canning jar and process.  Of course, you could always add sugar and/or cinnamon for some added sweetness if you desire.

Chunky Applesauce

We recently acquired three large boxes of Washington Red apples.  Now these apples are not the crispest of all apples, but I was not about to let them go to waste.  Over the next few days I will post about 5 different ways I used up these apples.  Today, we will focus on chunky applesauce.

I gathered my helpers and we got busy peeling, coring and dicing the apples.  Nothing went to waste, as we gave all the peels and cores to our horses and soon when I get my compost pile going, half of our fruit/veggie scraps will go to the horses and the other half will be tossed into the compost.  Great way to go green!

I put the apples (about 40) into a large stock pot with 1/2 cup of water,

took 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of cinnamon and a tablespoon of nutmeg

and dumped them on top of the apples.

Combine everything and cook until the apples are soft.

Then take a potato masher and mash the apples until you reach the consistency you like.

Put them into your sterilized jars and process them.  The end result is some very delicious chunky applesauce that can be eaten straight out of the jar, warmed up and served with vanilla ice cream or even used in an apple crisp.

Sidewalk Paint

Kids were bored and I was busy doing housework, so I had not time to entertain or take them any where. What to do?  Remember several posts on pinterest on making your own sidewalk paint!

I grabbed some cornstarch & food coloring out of my pantry and went to work.

Poured a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch into a few holes in my muffin pan and added some squirt of food coloring.  I only had the gel kind on hand, but obviously the liquid would work too (better in my opinion).

Than add a bit of water and stir.  The teal is completely stirred up and the yellow is a work in progress.

I made 6 different colors, which resulted in

my kids having over an hour of fun!  And of course, you realize this means mommy also had an hour of peace & quiet.   Ahhhhh!

It works just as well on paper, as it does

on the sidewalk.

The best part is it can all be cleaned up by the spray of a hose, which I will have the kids to do, allowing them to cool off in the hot summer sun and add another 30 minutes or so of peace for me.  Win, Win!

Three Wedding Cards

I have three wedding to attend between now and November.  The first wedding is this Saturday, so I decided to go ahead and make all the cards.  As you can see, the cards are all have the same die cut couple, but different paper.

This wedding is going to be done in black, pink and gold.  So I made the card with a black card base, a gold layer, followed by a pink print layer and finished it off with a shear gold ribbon.

The inside has the same gold paper, layered with white cardstock and stamped with two sentiments.

The next wedding's colors are red, black and white.  This card has a black card base, followed by a white layer and then on top of that is a red card stock that I embossed with swirls.  The "Thinking of...." sentiment is on front this time and I had no ribbon to match, so I did it without.

Inside of the red, black & white card, as well as the next card, I just put in white card stock and the sentiment saying "On Your Wedding Day".

This last card is actually for the wedding I am attending this Saturday and her colors are purple with a touch of green.  The card base is green, followed by a print that has purple, green, brown and a touch of blue and I added a purple ribbon to the bottom.

I really like how similar, yet different these cards are all due to the change of colors, making them very personal for each couple.

Father's Day

I bought my husband tickets for our local baseball game. He will be picking up the tickets at will-call, but I wanted to have something for him to actually open on Fathers Day.  So I made the following extra large ticket!

I started out by cutting out this baseball wording on my Silhouette.  If you have a Silhouette, you will notice the letters are all individually cut, which I didn't want, so all you have to do is weld them together.

This tickets is cut out at 9 x 4 inches

Layer the player and wording on top and then write out what you want it to say.  Mine says the teams, date, time, section, row and seat numbers.

For the men of our church, we will playing a question game.  The winning fathers will receive a cookie.  I wanted the cookie to feel special, so I cut out the same ticket as above, but these are cut out at much smaller.  I think they are like 2 1/5 x 1 1/2.

Stamp it with a sentiment

Put the cookie in a cd sleeve.  The cookies are from Costco and the sleeves were bought at Wal-Mart

Wrap it in some twine.  This is not craft twine, but what I actually use in my garden.

and tie if off.

Then just attach the ticket with glue dots!

Simple, yummy and masculine.