Homemade Thursdays

All my girls except for Anna have been blankie girls. Wendy and Lily have been very attached to their blankets. Wendy has a pink Martha Stewart blanket, from my Aunt Barbara, that has been worn so thin it is barely in one piece-thinner than a dryer sheet with big holes. She loves it still and says it is beautiful. I bought her a similar but thicker blanket when she was 2 to see if we could "replace" the grubby one. She wanted nothing to do with the new one I offered, but thankfully Lily took right to that one and it did not go to waste!

I crocheted this blankie size blanket for Rose for her first birthday. It may not become her favorite. We'll just have to wait and see. Click here to see the pattern. I used the softest yarn I have ever felt! It is this bamboo yarn from Micheal's. If you are into yarn, you must check out this squishy, wonderful yarn and find something to make with it!

We also made this sweet little card for my husband's co-worker that had a baby boy this week! I picked up the stamp of baby foot prints at Wal-mart several years ago. It is my favorite for obvious reasons:)
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Homemade Thursdays

On vacation a couple of months ago, my sister in law was crocheting soap saver bags for missionaries. She was using beautiful rainbow colored yarn. But what got me really excited was that the yarn was 100% cotton and you can buy it at Wal-mart for $1.47! I came home, picked up yarn and a couple of needles and got to work. That's another thing that is great about crochet, you only need a couple of supplies!

All you frugal couponing ladies are very familiar with buddy bars I'm sure! Well here is a home made version. I did not use a pattern, I just made this one to fit the little baby bath bars in the picture.

There are tons of patterns on the web to chose from. Check out some here. I have learned a lot from Teresa's blog Learn To Crochet. Her video tutorials are VERY helpful! I also like Lion Brand Yarn's website. They have a lot of free patterns from beginner on up. I'm working on this now.
One of my goals for this year is to complete one crochet project a month. I have a pretty good head start:0) Go be inspired on Homemade Thursdays and make yourself something!

Crock Pot Applebutter

I was inspired to make applebutter in my crock pot by this post from my cyber-twin Monica! And since I am all for cooking if it doesn't keep me in the kitchen all day, this was the perfect recipe for me! I had done this once before with some so-so applebutter that we had purchased and made the so-so applebutter into the best we had ever had...of course I did not write down how I came to that result. I am trying to take more notes on these little adventures in cooking, so when it turns out good I can actually reproduce it! This turned out really good, not perfect, but really good. Worth trying just to smell it cooking!

The ingredients:

2 large jars of no sugar added applesauce

(rinse out one of the jars to store the finished applebutter in)

1 1/2 cups organic sugar

4 tblsp. ground cinnamon

1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 adorable 3 year old assistant (Lily)she loves and insists on helping me cook

Mix the ingredients in the crock. Cook on high for 12 hours and low for another four hours. Once it really started to simmer, I vented the lid with a butter knife placed across one end of the crock under the lid. This allows the sauce to reduce and thicken. I did stir it occasionally just to see how it was thickening, and to keep it from scorching around the edges. My crock pot gets pretty hot!

This is the finished sauce after I transferred it to a bowl, so we could have some warm and to let it cool before I put it in the jar. The two jars of applesauce made about one jar of applebutter.


Read more Kitchen Tip Teusdays at Tammy's Recipes!
Read Homemade Thursday at Ship Full of Pirates!