Homemade Honey Strawberry Jam. (NO SUGAR)

The words “sugar-free” are really starting to frustrate me. Sugar free to me means no sugar, at all, no real sugar, no fake sugar (i.e. splenda, etc.) just nature type natural sweeteners, i.e. unsweetened applesauce, fruit juice, especially honey.

First off, this post is only pictures. The recipe is amazing and I found it at Simple Bites, it is by Aimee.

My mom has been making homemade jam since before I was born and though I have always wanted to love it and though she always, always, cuts the amount of sugar called for in half, it is so sweet it gives me a stomach ache. Store bought jelly especially gives me one. So I stopped eating jelly/jam/preserves entirely, until I thought of honey. Someone, somewhere had to have a recipe out there. There was one. Thank you Aimee from Simple Bites!!!

My family has been eating this non-stop and when we run out, we are going to find more honey based jelly/jam recipes, so look for a coming collection.

The last picture is from tonight. I realized at the beginning of this post that I never took a picture of the jars after they were done. There are only three left!!

Note: Mistake time!! I was a bit heavy-handed on the lemon juice and boy oh boy can you taste it! I love it, but it might be a little bitter if you prefer sweeter jams.

Happy Jamming!

Sustainable Project #4: Upgrade/fix for worn shoes.

This next project was thought up by blogger Love Megan, in her DIY for Delilah post.

Here is a picture of the shoes she did for her little one:

DIY sparkle toe shoes by Love Megan

So cute!!! The more I look at this picture the more I want a pair!

The snug has a pair of flats that she has worn and worn and worn. Unfortunately they were made of some sort of velvety material, so this happened.

Why mostly on the left foot, I don’t know. The glitter was a perfect solution to this problem, there was no way I would be able to nicely recover those with fabric since the soles are so thin.

Here are the supplies. We needed scissors to trim off the excess strings from the worn parts..

We also used painters tape to create a straight line, since I am no good at straight lines. Seriously, I can’t even hold a ruler straight.

This is after the first coat, right after we took the tape off. Speaking of, take the tape off before the mod podge dries, or else all your glitter may come off in big, unreasonable chunks.

A note about the glitter. We don’t have a lot of glitter in our house (gasp!), only three very small containers of green, silver and purple. The snug was insistent that we use black glitter, so had to buy this from the craft store, but this was the only thing we bought for this project. ALSO, the picture above was taken after we completed the shoes. This project uses a super small amount of glitter. The leftover black will be put to good use this coming Halloween though.

The shoes turned out extremely cute. There are now three different textures, satin, velvet and glitter! So far the glitter has held up extremely well (it has been about a month), though I don’t let her wear these shoes to the park.

Happy fixing!

P.S. My Toms from years ago are starting to get holes and worn, hopefully I can think of something to fix those, since I feel they are beyond glitter.

Happy fixing!!!

Sustainable Project #3: DIY ceiling fan cleaning cloth!

Whoa, it is hot!

We had a very confused, blizzard filled April, a very rainy May and now the weather is ready to jump into summer. The fans are ready to twirl, but there is a lot of dust that accumulates on top of a ceiling fan. Let’s put all those nice little cilia hairs to work, right? No.

We unfortunately do not have any ceiling fans in our house, but my mother in law does. While helping her get ready for guests, we were trying to find a good way to clean the fans. I remembered that we had purchased a swiffer duster brush and had seen many patterns for reusable brushes. I told her I would grab the brush and bring it by the next day.

Well, thanks to a faulty sense of time, due to child rearing, turns out we bought that duster 3-4 years ago and it has been long gone after 3-4 moves. So, I had to think of something else, quickly. Since, you know, no one likes a disappointed mother in law.

After some googling on how to clean ceiling fans I came across the idea of using a pillowcase to enclose the fan blade and clean without having all the dust fall down, almost all of it stays entrapped in the pillowcase. Genius.

However, there is no way I am going to use a good or bad pillowcase to clean something. Oh no! There are too many other awesome things to do with a pillowcase, for example, there’s the pillowcase bag, pillowcase skirt, pillowcase dress, pillowcase shirt, pillowcase ironing board cover, pillowcase pillowcase, it could go on and on.

I looked around my house to see what I could find and lo and behold, I had two old, ratty, torn, dish towels! Perfect!!

Here is what you will need:

Two old, gross dish towels, scissors, and a needle and thread (or a sewing machine).

This  dish towel had a giant gash in the center and tons of ripped up edges. I trimmed the edges a bit so they wouldn’t get caught in my machine and cause un-slightly damages. Then I stitched up the center.

Lay the two dish towels right sides together.

Then pin and sew! When you sew them together be sure to put your seam inside of the hemmed edge, instead of on it. This is something nice you could do for yourself and/or your machine.

Wa-la! Done!

Here it is from the other side.

This is what the side seam looks like.

The towels in action! We just sprayed a little water on the fan blade and then ran the towel along it, scrubbing a bit in the tighter spots. The best part about this, the towel fibers trap the dust better than pillow material would AND after you are done you can throw it in the wash!

I knew I was keeping those towels around for something.

This project with a sewing machine took all of ten minutes.

Happy Sustainable Cleaning!!

My ever-growing appreciation of worms!!!

I must be really getting into gardening this year because I can not stop thinking about worms. This book has been helping:

The Earth Moved
by Amy Stewart

It is very good and very interesting. So in anticipation for worms and spring and gardening, I have been reading this book, researching worm composting, and I made a wreath.

Two wreaths in fact. Oh how things change. I am really not a wreath person. Or at least I wasn’t until I saw this:

P.S. Capture the details Monday make it wreath!

You might have seen this one on pinterest. For some ridiculous reason, I fell in love. So I made not one, but two. The first was a gift and followed the directions.

Adorable! I changed the yarn, Martha Stewart fun fur yarn was on sale. The snug picked out the flowers.

For the second wreath, I added my own, worm inspired flare!

With handmade knitted worms!!!

Here are instructions for the worm variation.

Start with your wreath or wreaths. For the worm version, I wrapped the top half with the “grass yarn” and the bottom with some brown worsted weight I had.

When making the wreaths, try to keep your kiddos from playing frisbee with them. However, if that is not possible, hot glue fixes lots of things.

Grab some of your favorite scrap yarn, scissors, a tapestry needle and some double-pointed needles. I used size 7 needles. However, anything can work, the bigger the needle, the bigger the stitches, the bigger the worm, etc.

To make a worm, you just make an i-cord. Which is surprisingly simple. I went to you-tube for some visual instructions. Basically, you cast on 3 stitches and knit one row, then without turning your work, you slide it over on the needle and bringing your yarn around the back, you keep knitting. A tube will be created.

Cast on 3, leaving a nice string and knit 7 rows.

When you go to knit your next row, bring your yarn around to the front and purl that row.

Purl the next row, also.

Next, keep knitting until you reach your desired length, I kept my worms at about 6 inches.

Grab your tapestry needle, weave it through the stitches, pull them tight together and secure!

Weave your cast on yarn into the worm.

TA-DA!!! You have a lovely little worm!!! The purl stitches are to represent the worms clitellum. Which is roughly the part of the worm that makes more worms.

Make as many worms as you want and attach them to your wreath. I used some T-pins I had.

I also made a different sign!

Happy worming!!!

Sustainable Project #2: Sweater Coffee Coozies.

Today I made some coffee coozies from old sweaters I had picked up from the good will. It was the good will outlet in fact. Even the good will has outlets! Everything is in giant bins and you pay for it by the pound. Incredible.

These are super easy and super cute.

Start off with some sweaters in varying colors. Choose your base color.

Cut out a rectangle, roughly 10 inches x 3 inches. I started out by measuring the cup and cutting out more of a trapezoid, however, I found out it works better to just cut a straight rectangle and alter the seam. You get a better fit.

NOTE! For sweater with a variety of materials (i.e. 10% cotton, 50% wool, etc) you will want to cut along the side of the sweater. This will keep the coozie from unraveling while you sew it.

Next decide on the decoration you want. For the first one I did circles, similar to a coozie I already had. For the second one I did a tulip and leaves. I cut the shape out of paper and traced it onto the sweater with a washable marker.

Pin and sew.

I did a straight stitch, spiral pattern for the circles.

Then zigzag around the edges for the tulip and leaves. (above picture was taken before sewing).

Next, bring the edges together, you can measure on a cup first, but basically you want the bottom to be narrower than the top. You can see this above.

TA-DA! Easy Peasy!

ANOTHER NOTE! About the edging. For the circles I tried out a decorative stitch. For the tulip I did a once folded hem. Both rippled out a bit, though you can hardly tell when the coozie is on the cup.

ONE MORE! The purple sweater was thick, really thick. It turned out to be a little too thick for this project. This project works best with sweaters that have a similar feel and weight.

Happy Sustainable Crafting!

Sustainable Project # 1: Stuffed Pigs!

Hooray it is April! Hooray Easter is done! Hooray, only wonderful, non-commercialized Earth day is coming up! I love Earth Day! I love Earth Day, every day!

In honor of spring, earth day, April, the wind, sustainability and all things reasonable, natural and respectful, I am planning on doing more and more sustainable projects! You will be able to note them easily by the title! These will be upcycled, recycled, bicycled (kidding) projects that are reasonable and more importantly sustainable!!! Sustainable meaning, they will use the absolute least amount of new materials (usually only thread) and will in (hopefully) no way produce more waste.

Some of these projects will be of my own creation, but many will be things I have been itching to make and can’t wait to share, created by many fantastic people.

First off, a long anticipated project, by one of the aformentioned people!!

HOMEMADE PIGS!!!

“Jillian, Jillian, Jillian Jiggs, Maker of wonderful, marvelous pigs!”

I picked this book up about a month ago at a used book sale, it was one of my favorites when I was a kid, though I could only remember the adorable pigs! Now this story and I have been reunited (that is always so exciting!) and the snug loves it just as much as I did.

The best part?

There is a pattern on how to make your own pig!!!

You will need:

Old tights with holes thtat are WAY too small for your ever-growing green bean child.

Also:

Needle and thread, Embroidery floss, scissors, Makers, Buttons, Felt, Fiber Fill, Yarn, and various fabric for clothing.

First, take a leg of a tight and cut off a chunk. The pattern suggests 7 inches, we did a little bit more.

Cut off the top part of the tight and unfold it. We cut a straight line up from the crotch of the tight, thus yielding two of these pieces. This part you can use to cut out the little circles, about 2 inches in diameter, to make the little piggy legs.

Next grab the needle and thread and on the WRONG side of the tight sew a running stitch.

P.S. Those are not my hands!!! Babies first non-medical stitches!

Adorable!

Nice and almost straight. That doesn’t matter though, because in the next step…

Pull those stitches tight and secure them (tie a knot). Then flip the whole thing right side out.

Stuff  a little bit! This is a picture of an overstuffed pig, you only need a little bit in order to do all the head details.

Sew the cute button nose right on the scrunched up part.

Add the face details. We did the suggested French Knots for eyes and a smiley mouth. We will get creative with the next few we do.

Cut some ears out of the felt and whip stitch them on! Then finish stuffing!

Twist the tail and secure.

Take the little circles and do a running stitch around the edge. Put a little bit of stuffing in the center and pull the stitches tight. You should get a little foot.

Fasten the little foot together, so the stitches don’t come loose and attach to the pigs body.

Soon you will have four cute little leg/feet things.

An adorable little face!

And a super cute butt!

Next, add clothes and hair. Alas, this was as far as we got tonight, before bed time. Tomorrow we will finish this pig and make more! I will update with pictures!

Happy Sustainable Crafting!!!

A Summer Without Camp.

Funny I just wrote about spring and now I am on to summer. This subject has been bothering me for a month though, so here it goes….

It is interesting how things have changed. I can remember all the times I went to summer camp when I was young, it was that rare. I think in my whole life I went to summer camp about 4 times. It was awesome!

Now, however, there are more camps than I can wrap my head around. There are publications and websites out specifically about finding the right camp.  That is what you are supposed to do with city/suburban kids in the summer now, send them to camp. Every week a new camp costing anywhere from $90-$400+ a week!

For the past couple of years I have been browsing, looking, finding, applying and paying for various summer camps. We started with the mommy and me ones and then last summer the snug started doing camps all by herself. She did three. This year I was planning on capping it at four or five. Four or Five!!! That would be four or five weeks! Summer only last about 10 weeks! What in the world was I planning for the summer after this?

Coming in at the tune of around $260 a week for each camp, it would be at max, $1,300 for all the camps. That is a good chunk of money for us. Unfortunately here in Denver the demand for camps is high. Most of the camps open up their admission in late January. Which was bad news for us, since the bug had just lost his job. By mid-February all the camps we were looking into were sold out. There were some scholarships available, but we found out too late.

So after much, conflict(?), we decided that we obviously weren’t going to be able to do any summer camps this year. Even if we did come up with the money and there were openings we have decided against summer camps for now.

This is good and bad for a few reason:

Good: The snug will be starting school full-time in the fall, this will give us a chance to really hang out.

Bad: The snug loves camp and while we will have many play dates, I can not guarantee the amount of socialization.

Good: We will have us a traditional summer, filled with gardening, hiking and family stay at home adventuring.

Bad: Most of our friends are completely booked with summer camps.

Good: We will be able to do lots of themes and see the greater Denver area.

Bad: We will be sick of each other very quickly.

Good: We will find ways to get around being sick of each other and it will be hard to separate once summer ends.

Bad: The snug really love camps.

Good: The money we saved from not signing up for summer camps we can use for cheaper/cooler family activities. Zoo sleepover anyone?

Extremely Good: Hopefully, next year and in the future, she will appreciate camp more when we can afford to go.

Extremely Good: The snug has an amazing mom (me) who is going to make this summer AWESOME!!!

Obviously kids do not need summer camps, but yet maybe they do. Summer camps are awesome and bring lots of opportunity and freedom. Oh the conflict!

My point is, we are not going to get discouraged, we are going to be piling ideas all summer long for eco-friendly, budget friendly, earth happy and overall awesome play!!

First off the summer bucket list…..we need a plan!

Happy summer dreaming!!!