Hand Warmers

I don't know about you, but my hands are always cold.  Especially at work.  I did a little searching online and found that it was pretty easy to make some.  I looked at several different tutorials and came up with my own. 

First, I cut four pieces of fabric (I used flannel) in 5-inch by 5-inch squares.  

With wrong sides together, I stitched all the around, leaving a little opening one side.  I clipped the corners, turned the squares inside out and poked the corners with a crochet hook (it was the only thing I could find!). 

 

I filled each hand warmer with about 2/3 cup of rice.  This seemed to be just the right amount for a 5-inch by 5-inch hand warmer.  I sewed the little opening closed and was ready to heat them up in the microwave!  I tried a few different times to see what worked best and found that 45 seconds in the microwave was perfect.  

I actually used these at work today.  Our office is quite chilly and my hands are always cold.  I'm also going to be giving these as some Christmas gifts as well.  I just need to make up a little tag with instructions on how to use.  These little hand warmers are great way to use up scrap pieces of fabric and super easy to make.  I know I'll be using them a lot this winter!

O Christmas Tree!

Last Saturday, Jeremy and I went to Giordano's Tree Farm in Freedon, NJ.  This was our first time here.  They had a nice selection of trees and we were able to find a tree that would fit in our apartment.  And you can't beat the price...$40 a tree, any size, any type!  That's pretty cheap for cute your own in New Jersey. 

Giordano Tree Farm

Jeremy with our tree!

All decorated!

Craftaholics Gift Swap!

Back in November, I signed up for a gift swap over at Craftaholics Anonymous.  My partner Natalie and I exchanged emails and she was excited to see that I was from New Jersey.  She grew up in Sussex County, which is the same county I grew up in!  Such a small world!  She told me her fabric stash has lots of bright colors and polka dots.  So this is what I came up with!

I sewed a cute little zipper pouch with a detachable handle/key chain and made a snowman ornament (with glitter of course!).  I really hope she liked everything!

Christmas Cards

I'm really slacking with this blog lately.  I guess that's what happens with Christmas right around the corner!  This year, like most years, I made our Christmas cards.  I tried using what I had since I have tons of paper and envelopes.  The only thing I did buy was the base for the card.  I didn't have enough of one color and wanted them to all look the same.

For the tree, I stamped the image using black StazOn ink.  I used StazOn because I was going to color in the image with Stampin' Up watercolor pencils and then use a blender pen to give the tree a watercolor look.  I colored the entire tree, stump, and star.  Then went over with the blender pens.  I used markers to color in the ornaments and garland.  And of course, the tree needed some sparkle!  So I used Dazzling Diamonds for the star and ornaments.

After I finished coloring and blending, I corner punched each tree and then glued them on to red card stock.  By the way, I love the Martha Stewart Adhesive Tape Roller!  And I love the fact you can buy it at Michael's and use a 40% coupon.  Once the cards were assembled, I added more sparkle with these little stick-on gems I found.  I'm really happy with how the cards turned out.  And I realized I never took a picture of the inside!  I printed off a little saying, backed it on card stock, and signed the cards.  Here is a picture of the finished product!

Applesauce!

A few weeks ago, I went apple picking with Jeremy and my sister, Amy.  We picked over 60 pounds of apples and our (well...Amy and I) goal was to make applesauce, can it, and give it as Christmas gifts.  We went to Pochuck Valley Farm in Glenwood, NJ and picked as many apples as we could stuff into the three bags we bought.  I'm not really sure what types of apples we picked, but we had a mixture of both green and red types.

After picking over 60 pounds of apples, we went back to my mom's house to start making the applesauce.  Amy has fruit and vegetable strainer for her KitchenAid mixer.  This is the best thing to have if you are making tons of applesauce!  All we had to do was cut up the apples and cook them down before sending them through the strainer.  The strainer does all the hard work.  It separates the seeds and stems from the sauce.  A bowl catches all the apple sauce (see the pictures at the beginning of this post).

Once we had enough applesacue to fill some canning jars, we put the sauce on the stove and let it boil for a few minutes.  Once it was boiling, we put the sauce in the jars and placed the jars in boiling water for 15 minutes.  You can find the instructions on canning applesauce here.

In case you were wondering...60 pounds of apples produces over 20 quarts of applesauce!  We canned most of the sauce, but froze two large batches to serve at Thanksgiving. 

Check out the large, silver stockpot behind us.  It's filled to the top with applesauce!