Halloween-ish at Our House

I usually don't decorate for Halloween!
It seems like too much work, when all I really want to do is pull it all down and put up Christmas decorations on the first day of November.
Superman has always thought I was crazy to want Christmas decorations up so early! But, I just LOVE the Christmas season!
And, I think I've rubbed off on him!

Here's my usual idea of decorating for Halloween:

(Thank you very much, Krispy Kreme!)

This year I bowed to the peer pressure (from my children & Superman) and did a little bit of decorating.

After seeing these all over the blogosphere, I had to make a few for us!

We started with these: (each one was $1 or less!)

And some of this:

This would be a good place to add that had I just bought the little bottle up front, the Martha Stewart glow-in-the-dark glitter, that would have been plenty for all three of my boys! It was their FAVORITE part!!!

However, I honestly planned to make all of them myself!

That is, until SUPERMAN decided he was going to help me get my Martha on!Then the littlest joy joined me!Then the oldest joy! So now, we have a little of this:and this:and this:

and this:

But if you look closely, you'll see that Superman has been decorating, too...

Lord, help me!

Etsy Shop

Well, I finally got around to opening my Etsy shop!
You can find me here.
There is also a link on my sidebar.

I'll be adding more throughout the week.
The journals are so much fun!
They make great stocking stuffers!

Caboodles~ New Use for an Old Friend

In my brief, little sewing career, I've managed to amass lots of sewing gadgets like this: And I needed somewhere to store them all!

As luck would have it, I brought home boxes of my high school goodies last time I went back home. In my stash of yearbooks and love notes, I happened to still have my old Caboodles.

Tell me you had a Caboodles! They were wonderful! My Dad called them his daughters' tackle boxes, bless his heart! (Ashleigh, do you still have yours?)

Anyway, I decided that pink, plastic bit of nostalgia would be perfect as my 'new' sewing box. And she is!
Ahhhh, I LOVE the 80's!

It makes me want to track down my cassingle of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and turn it up really loud. That is, if I could find a tape deck in which to play said cassingle!

T-shirt Fun

I celebrated another birthday this week!
I packed us up and headed to my parents for the weekend.
And came home with this...THANKS MOM!!!
And since taking her out of the box last night, I've been in sewing heaven!

Last night I made a pocketbook.

Today I made a shirt for Wyatt:

It was simple!
I started with a pair of his swim trunks that were headed to Goodwill. Then I found the font and size of "W" that I thought would look nice on one of his old t-shirts. I literally held a piece of paper up to the screen and traced the letter. What a great make-shift light box!I cut out the traced pattern from paper.
Then, used the pattern to cut out a camouflage "W" from the swim trunks.
Finally, I pinned the camouflage "W" to the front of his t-shirt and used my favorite stitch of all- ZIGZAG- to put it on!

His response was, "It ACTUALLY looks pretty good Mom!"

To which I said, "You're welcome, son!"

(Refrigerator) Sweet Pickles for Canning

After a trip to the State Farmer's Market this week, I had enough pickling cucumbers to make another batch of sweet pickles for Superman. I had no clue how many quarts of pickles I could put up with a bushel of cucumbers... it was a lot!First, I pulled out my 'Mouli'. It's the neatest little 80's gadget! This one belonged to my Nannie. (You could also use a mandolin to slice the cucumbers super-thin.)Once you've sliced the cucumbers, they need to be sprinkled with 2-3 tbsp. of good salt. I use Himalayan sea salt.It will take about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, to allow the salt to pull out water from the cucumbers.

It will start out looking like this:But as the water is pulled from the cucumbers, it'll look like this:The more water pulled from the cucumbers, the better able to absorb the liquid and spices you'll add shortly!

Once I've finished slicing the cucumbers, I begin chopping up the bell peppers and onions. I didn't have any green bell peppers today, so I used the red bell peppers that I had on hand.You can add the peppers and onions to the salted mix, as well.

Next, simmer your pickling spice mixture on the stove until the sugar dissolves.

After allowing the salted cucumbers to sit for 2 hours, drain off the liquid. (There will be LOTS!) And rinse the cucumbers, peppers, and onions in a strainer.

Load your canning jars with the vegetables, then fill the jars with the warm pickling spice solution. A bushel of cucumbers made LOTS of pickles! I had to make 5x the amount of pickling spice solution in order to have enough to cover the cucumbers sufficiently.Also, you don't want to pack the cucumbers in the jar tightly!

They will absorb the pickling spice solution, and so you need enough room in the jar to hold extra solution. The first time I made this recipe, I noticed that after a week in the refrigerator, the jars had very little solution in them. Only pack the jars to below the neck. This will allow for excess solution that will be absorbed by the pickles as they age.In the end, a bushel of cucumbers produced 11 quarts and 3 pints of sweet pickles.

The 12th jar is filled with onions, red bell peppers, and banana peppers for Superman!

Recipe:

1 cup green bell peppers

7 cups pickling cucumbers

1 cup onions

Pickling Spice Recipe:

1 1/2 cup white or apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sugar or sucanat

1 tsp. celery seed

1 tsp. mustard seed

**To keep the pickles crunchy, you don't water bath process them! You simply store the jars in your refrigerator. They keep 5-6 months stored in the refrigerator. However, I've never had a supply last that long at our house! They are a new family favorite!

**Allow the pickles to age for a week or two before eating. The longer they sit, the better they taste!