It's A Crafty Christmas

So I fully realize that I have been MIA for a bit, but I promise it was for good reason! I have been crafting a bunch and cooking a ton ! A lot of what I have been working on, I gave as gifts and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise by posting what I’ve made.

Read the following statement in your best game show host voice:

BUT NOW I CAN!

So lets bring on the crafting/cooking binge post.

This craftastic basket is jam packed with DIY goodness. I made this puppy for a whopping $21.87!

I went to the Boston haymarket with my friend and brought along my sweet old lady cart to carry my produce. Now I definitely needed that cart because I eneded up buying a TON of produce. We’re talking about 10 pounds of tomatoes, 9 pkgs of berries, some peppers, a plastic grocery bag of jalapenos, and more. It was slightly silly how much I got- and all for about $22. I was VERY proud haha.

My loot!

It was rather frigid that day

Big beauties

Washed and halved

Olive oil, minced garlic, and some simple seasoning

The clear bowl is full of just the slimy innards of tomatoes

Well I made a ton of different things. One of which being a Roasted Veggie Salsa. I had two types of tomatoes, of which I sliced in half and seeded. I tossed them on a sheet tray- or a cookie tray- and topped them with some olive oil, minced garlic, basic seasonings, keeping things pretty much basic. I wanted to please an overall palate so I kept it neutral. I also seeded and ribbed a bunch of bell peppers, a handful of jalapeno peppers too. I sliced up a small bag of red onions, tossed them in olive oil, salt and pepper and spread them out on a sheet tray.

Do your best to ONLY remove the seeds and ribs. Waste not, want not!

Set my oven at 400 and roasted all the veggies for a bout 20 minutes, until the house smelled amazing and the peppers and onions were browning and crisp a bit

LIGHTLY toasted, let these puppies roast some more!

I threw the peppers and tomatoes together in a big bowl and using a stick blender, I basically pureed it. I wanted some texture left in it, but I was aiming for that typical “restaurant” style salsa that you end up eating an entire bowl of before realizing you’re even doing it.  I roughly chopped up some cilantro and mixed it in that beautiful mix of deliciousness. I covered the bowl and let it chill for a bit, tasted it, then adjusted the seasonings some.

Cover and chill. Let the flavors marinade for a bit before you call it a day.

Pored  that elixir of the latin gods into some sanitized mason jars and canned them using the water bath method.

TO LEARN HOW, CHECK OUT THIS INSTRUCTABLE:

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Can-Homemade-Salsa/

I made a little more salsa than I had mason jars, so I ended up using old jars with screw tops and just throwing it in the fridge for myself.  And yes, majority of that “house batch” is gone.

I also made some mixed berry freezer jam, using strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. But that day I was doing a million things at once and failed to take picutes. But I used 4oz mason jars and people got 2 of them for gifts.  Instead of using a waterbath canning method, I was able to just put them in the freezer in order to get it done.

It was real hard not to eat all of this

One canning adventure that I was really excited to make was some home made cranberry jam. I got the recipe from an article in Bon Appetit, it was for a cranberry margarita using this jam. I made the jam, canned it in a 4oz jar, and tied a nip of tequila to the jar and attached a copy of the margarita recipe.  And of course I sampled the recipe before dishing it out!

Used Whole berries

SO GOOD

Being me, and fully embracing my Pinterest addiction, I made some dry dip mixes and painstakenly poured them into empty glass ornaments. Which believe me, is a HELL of a lot more annoying and difficult than it sounds . Thank you plated desserts class for teaching me how to make a paper cone that I could also use as a funnel.

I attached a label to each ornament as well as a basic recipe to make the dip.

Onion Dip

4 tsp beef boullion

8 tsp dried onion

1 tsp onion powder

½ tsp seasoned pepper

½ tbsp. garlic powder

~

Add mix  to ½ cup sour cream or greek yogurt.

Fiesta Dip

½ tbsp dried parsley

½ tbsp dried onion

¼ tbsp. dried chives

½ tbsp. chili powder

¼ tbsp. cumin

¼ tbsp. salt

~

Add mix to ½ cup sour cream and ½ cup mayo

Italian Dip

1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese

¾ tsp garlic powder

¾ tsp onion powder

¼ tsp paprika

½ tsp celery seed

¼ tsp seasoned salt

~

Add mix to ½ cup sour cream

Bacon Dip

1 tbsp bacon bits

½ tsp beef bouillon

½ tbsp. dried onion

¼ tsp minced dried garlic

~

Add to ½ cup sour cream

To go with the dips, I thrifted a few small bowls. I looked for glass, something different. Nothing too crazy, something neutral so that it could be appropriate for anytime use or for a party. I also found small packs of plain wooden spoons at walmart- only 88cents! I used some scotch tape and some crafting scissors to prep designs on the spoon handles and painted them with just simple acrylic paint. I let them dry, then sprayed them with a clear lacquer with waterproofing.

simple color scheme worked well, just picked my friend's favorite colors!

  AND THEN IT WAS CRICUT TIME!

I was able to "rent" a holiday cartridge package online for 20 bucks. It waas like 6 cartidges and I get to use them for 60 days. I love that! It saves me a ton of money and I won't use the cartridges any other time. 

I used the online cricut craft room and just filled up my boards with all sorts of images and then put them together after. I didn't end up using every single image but thats ok, I literally have a drawer full of precut images and paper crafts half done that I use all the time for other cards...wait...does that make me a cricut hoarder?

Is this a new diagnosis? 

I'll take it. 

 

One thing I do like to do with my cards, is that I try my best to add one 3D effect to each card. I know its nothing crazy, just a little touch. 

My table full of holiday images

made about 13ish cards!

I tend to buy a lot of random stuff on my thrifting trips. I tend to come up with weird ideas in the store, but usually forget to write them down, so by the time I get home, I forget why I bought the random stuff. One day I came home with 7 bags of fake flowers. They were 50 cents a bag, and on the clearance shelf. Why did I need 7 bags? To this day I have no idea what I originally wanted to do, but I've definitely put them to use.
On one particular thrifting trip, I bought a handful of old 1990's Xmen comics. I am a superhero junkie, always have been. So naturally I looked online to make sure the issues weren't worth anything. Most of them had to do with the character Jubilee, in my opinion the worst and useless character in the superhero realm but anywho......

SO

I cut these pages up in strips, a few different sizes and using hot glue and a gluestick, I made a TON of paper ribbons. Then I made a couple wreaths from those ribbons. Covered the wreaths in glitter spray. and added a bow. bam. holiday wreath that isn't screaming Santa is coming to town.

So I had all this stuff I've crafted and I took a tally and made lists and more lists. I wanted to make sure that I had ENOUGH for everyone. I had thrifted a few cookbooks to go in the baskets since just about everything was themed around food, figured that it would be a good way to go.
I wanted to make something nice for the girls.

Enter, ARM KNITTING.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjgrcvUNugw

In college, I had an insane abundance of t shirts. I mean seriously, they give out a t shirt for anything. you poop, you get a "good job on your poop!" shirt. Not really, but that would be cool....
but seriously, I had a huge clothes basket of shirts. So I got the weird idea to cut them into strips, tie them together and make yarn out of them. I did that before and knitted a welcome mat for a friend using turkey basters as my needles. Well I was online and saw this youtube video for "Arm Knitting". and with all those t shirts I made a massive blanket.

so this year for Christmas, I used arm knitting and made some chunky scarves. Took me about 2 movies- yea I measure time in movies- to make 4 scarves. Once you get in the swing of things, it gets really easy and you don't even look as you're doing it. I used 3-4 different yarn at a time, two chunky types and 2 basic types.

 

Then there are the boys. And what to the boys do during the winter? They are the ones who are resonsible for building the fires!

Ok seriously I was reaching here. lol. but anyway. I made some "fire starters"
REAL easy, REAL simple!

Took some toilet paper rolls, stuffed them with dryer lint and wrapped them in yarn- I just so happened to have fire colored yarn- and called it a day. They are supposed to be a quick way to start a fire, in use with kindling. My brother has a fireplace, so I figured this was a good idea.

Oh and to wrap up this post....

In my family, we give Tree gifts. To us, these gifts are supposed to be something dumb, funny, useless things. And you usually have to regift them. We have this one coin keychain with a pope on it. We aren't a catholic family, let alone a religious family, which is why this is a random and funny tree gift. We don't necessarily regift the presents every year, but every few years those tree gifts pop up. Regardless, new tree gifts are always given.

Well this year, I made a perfect tree gift to give to a family friend at their christmas eve party.

I gave them an eye pad.

I hope you all had a great holiday! Happy New Year everyone, and I plan on keeping up with The Artisan Rooster, so stay posted!