Post Thanksgiving Turkey Stock

No photos today. My new lens should arrive on Monday. I have now learned that my purse is not a camera bag and that my purse likes to tip over when placed on a bench. We decided to replace the lens with a more powerful non-name brand lens. Let's hope we didn't make a mistake.

Thanksgiving was yesterday. It was stressful to prepare for but was well executed and generally fun. I cannot convey how happy I was that the weather was warm enough for the gaggle of young boys to play outside in the backyard. Of course, playing in the back yard turned into playing in the wetlands and then we had a bunch of muddy clothes and none too happy parents. Oopsie. Good thing we got the parents all relaxed on wine (and lots of it)

We made 2 turkeys. We deep fried a 13lbs bird and then roasted a 20lbs bird. The deep fry bird went rather smoothly. I think what time you save in roasting, you make up in prep work, but it frees up an oven. The roasted bird turned out to be beautiful, but we'll never cook a bird that big again. By the time the innermost meat was done, the outer meat was dry. No one complained, but we knew we could do better.

After everything was finished, the tables cleared and the girls were in their bath, we made turkey stock. We picked most of the meat off the bones and threw the bones, 2 quartered onions, some carrots, celery and herbs into our big stock pot with enough water to cover. We then let it boil down for hours and hours. After it had reduced by half we removed the solids and strained the remaining liquid through a cheesecloth. We were left with about 2 liters of stock. This morning we removed the half inch of fat from the stock and fed it to the dogs. We then took the cooled solids and removed all the bones. My husband then put everything through the meat grinder along with some leftover stuffing (The stuff that had burned to the pan) and made dog food. We've taken next to nothing out to the garbage, just some bones.

Home made dryer sheet

I found the original post for this idea months ago. I had an old flannel burp cloth that my mother had made for the girls lying nearby waiting its time to come to be a dust rag, so I rescued it from that fate and gave it eternal life as a dryer sheet. We don't use fabric softener in our washing machine because it makes the gasket around the door stink. I've heard this is not an uncommon problem for some front loader models.
After using a few sheets for a few days, all I can say is, "It works okay." Really, I have no complaints. Suits me fine. 'Salright. It's fine and dandy. Saves money. Less garbage. Clothes are soft.

DIY I Spy

I'm going to start staging little I Spy scenes and we'll make a book of our own. D loved helping put this together. Most of the items to find are crammed together in one location, but hey, she had fun. After I took the picture she went through and found all the matching items and put them together, then we put everything back where it came from. It was the only time she's let me put the sparkly pom-poms away without a fight.

I made these during her nap. The buttons came out of my stash that I'm not yet ready to let the girls know exists.

D made the tongue depressor turkey in class this week and the turkey sticker is from Bean's first ever art and crafts project at school. 

All day apple butter on a beautiful Fall day

My first attempt at Apple butter. It is currently simmering. I'll have to lend an update after it's done. It should be finished sometime around midnight tonight. I have to say, the house smells absolutely amazing. This beats any potpourri or scented candle. Just apples, sugar, cinnamon and cloves.

D was doing her Johnny Appleseed impersonation.

Hubby was spending the day outside doing some landscaping so the girls and I joined him to play. Miranda loved looking through the old brush piles for traces of mice and other little critters.

Patch found an old ice cream bucket and played with that. I forgot how much he loved ice cream buckets. You'll also see some really big grapevines behind Patch. These are a few of the grapevines that had grown wild and killed a few trees on the property before we bought it. Hubby has been fighting these grapevines for over a year now that he's done building the house. I decided to help today and try to rip some down myself. Let me tell you, those things are tough. They climb up all the way to the tops of the trees and reach over and ensnare the trees nearby their host. I pulled and pulled but once I had freed all but the top of the tree, my own weight wasn't enough to bring down the vine. Hubby had to step in and rip it down for me.

Bean found a purple ball which had rolled into the overgrowth that Hubby was clearing away.

The girls loved all the fun things to explore like rotting wood, bug trails, dried grass seed, big and little leaves, branches that were brittle and breakable, etc.

D and Patch really do love each other.

I have to leave you with one last story. I wasn't done trying to help out a little bit with limb and vine removal. I had brought down a few broken branches and some more vines when I went over to the willow tree (here in the background). There was a felled branch that was quite big; just behind the pile of brush that hubby was clearing out. I thought I'd drag that out of the way. I grabbed a big limb and gave it a heave. It snapped right off and I did the classical comedy fall-flat-on-your-butt. Seriously, I don't think one of the Stooges could have done it better. Nothing was wounded, but I put down the branches and picked up the camera. Photography is much safer.

Pinterest Addiction: Washing soap and birdnest necklace

I've become instantly addicted to Pinterest. Finally, I have a place to store all those great ideas that I see on the internet and try to convince myself to remember. I used to tell myself, if it's important enough, I'll remember it. That hasn't been working out in the past. But now I've completed a few crafts that I've pinned.
The girls and I have made our own laundry soap. Easy peasy recipe: 1 Cup Borax, 1 Cup Arm & Hammer Washing Soda and 1 bar Ivory soap or Fels Naptha. I use a blend of 50/50 Ivory and Fels Naptha. I think Fels Naptha works better but boy does it stink!

The second project this week was a birds nest necklace. It felt good to make some jewelry again. I had to bring in my toolbox from the garage where it had been resting for over three years and dust it off thoroughly. It was kind of gross. Once I opened it I was transported to the way i used to feel when I was creating my own jewelry. I found bags of stones and shells I had collected on my travels. There were pink shells from Key West, purple and orange rocks from Cape Cod and green and white stones from Greece. The prize piece is a chunk of black volcanic rock shaped like a flat triangle from Greece. I have big plans for that. Just looking through my tools and beads, rocks and wire, was a flush of emotion.
Sadly, this is a hobby I need to mothball until the girls are much older. I decided to make the birdnest necklace because it was quick and simple. Very satisfying and I was done in less than 30 minutes. Then everything was packed away and will be stored in the attic until I have time to really delve into this again.

Pumpkin Ravioli

My husband spent all day Saturday working on the roof of his sister's garage. He worked extra late into the night to finish up all the stuff he could help on and then he decided to have a quiet day of doing nothing in the house with us on Sunday. My husband's version on doing nothing involves, "playing around" in the kitchen. He wanted to see if he could cook a pumpkin in the pressure cooker. He did. It took all of 10 minutes. Then he needed to do something with that pumpkin, so he made pumpkin bars and pumpkin ravioli. Oh, and he needed applesauce for the pumpkin bar recipe, so he made applesauce in the pressure cooker. Again, only 10 minutes, start to finish. He used my kitchenaid mixer food grinder attachment to finish the applesauce. Then he had a bunch of leftover apple pulp as the byproduct of making applesauce. He added peanut butter and flour to it and baked it into dog treats.

I made the noodles for the ravioli and shaped the final product. I had some learning to do. My first few turned out enormous. D wanted to help at every step. Hubby gave her her own chunk of pasta and they rolled and shaped the dough and made a little ravioli by hand. I think hers had the best shape out of all of them.
We made a sage brown butter and garlic sauce and with a little grated parmesan, and it was fabulous.

The girls were watching the tree removal company trim the trees around the power lines. I told D that people who cut trees for a living are sometimes called Lumberjacks. She now calls the tree guy, "Jack."

Ear warmers

I started following a blog called Delia Creates. There are so many wonderful projects there. It didn't take long for me to find a post I had to recreate for myself. I took her ear warmer tutorial and adapted it for D.

The dimensions are smaller, obviously. I went with 3.5" at the widest and 2.25" at the smallest points. I tried to make it look Christmas-y with a white poinsetta made from felt.

Hopefully she likes it. She sure had fun posing for pictures.

The following is her favorite pose.

Bean looks like she's rolling her eyes.