Getting Picky With A Pin - Making Butter

We go through quite a bit of butter. Lately it seems we go through two boxes of butter every two weeks. What can I say? I'm a real fat kinda girl - none of that fake stuff is welcome here.

A little tired of regularly having to buy butter, always happy to have a bit more control over what's in what my family eats, and seeing an opportunity to cut down waste (the container, those papers I'm certain have to be coated with plastic, etc.) - I opted to just make my own butter.

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

It would have been super simple for me to run to the closest grocery store and grab store brand heavy cream to make my butter but that's not what I wanted if I were going to make my own. I wanted Snowville Creamery Heavy Whipping Cream.

Snowville Creamery is a local creamery where the cows are grass fed, their products are pasteurized at the lowest possible temperature, no homogenization, no rBST, and no antibiotics  - with that as a completely viable option I saw no reason to go any other direction with this.

Knowing that a local but not as close as I usually use grocery store carried Snowville Creamery milk I made sure to call ahead and ask if they carried their heavy cream. They did not. The hunt was on. I called a natural market I like but they were out. I called a grocery store waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the other side of town and they had some. Thankfully I didn't have to go quite that far, two stores between my home and the grocery store that was tremendously out of my way had it in stock.

Having traveled off my regularly beaten path I opted to get myself two additional treats while I was there.

I'll level with you - this wasn't a cheap trip. The heavy cream, the milk, and my chia drink brought me to a total of $18.

This half gallon of heavy whipping cream will allow me to make this recipe twice. For one batch use 4 cups (2 pints) of the heavy cream.

Hunting down the cream I wanted so badly was the hard part. Here come's the easy part.

I sterilized some jars that I wanted to store the butter in. All of the excess I intended to freeze. If you plan to do the same make sure not to fill your jars past the freezer fill line if they have one - otherwise your jar will break.

Gather your ingredients.

Pour your cream into your food processor. And get to processing. After a while it will look like beautiful whipped butter a bit like you see in the tub. Don't be fooled. You aren't finished yet.

What we need is for the cream to separate from the milk. Process until it looks like this.

Once it does give it another shot with the processor for good measure.

Two pints of heavy cream/butter seperated left me with this much buttermilk.

Squeeze out as much of the additional buttermilk from the butter as you can. Then add salt to taaste I added 1/4 tsp of kosher salt.

Then place it into your sterilized jars.

My entire first batch of butter was going to be frozen. After I made my second batch I kept 1 half-pint container out to make the hubs a special breakfast.

The Crunchy Betty Raw Honey Challenge

This pregnancy has done terrible things to my skin, but to be fair - I've had quite a lot of skin issues for years now. And by for years I mean probably since the age of 9 and definitely since the age of 13.

My skin problems never reached the upper echelons of terrible skin but it's been bad enough to seek the help (that didn't ultimately pan out) of a dermatologist a few times.

Enter Crunchy Betty, a green blogger loved by many. She has lovely clear skin and has a book available for purchase via Kindle about how you can fight your acne issues naturally. Her book focuses specifically on the problems of those of us with oily skin. Desperate to begin  my fight immediately I skipped right to the facial cleansers. All of them sounded like things I wanted to try but for reasons unknown to me (probably because it seemed simplest) I decided to try her cleanser using raw honey.

Rinse your face.
Gently scrub your face with raw honey.
Wait 5 - 10 minutes.
Rinse off the honey.
Done.

Having just bought some organic, fair trade, raw honey to use in the oatmeal mask recipe that is available for free I immediately tried the facial wash. I immediately liked it. My skin felt soft as did the hand I used to scrub my face and I could have almost sworn that my skin seemed at least a tiny bit brighter. Two things were then on my mind 1) I must know more! & 2) Let's try this for two weeks and see how it goes. When I returned to the book the next thing I read was Crunchy Betty challenging readers to try this raw honey method for two weeks. CAN DO!

Within a few days I noticed that the very small pimples I had were coming to a head and ready to make their exit in one way or another. My husband is an avid pimple popper and depending on how badly I have one it can be a battle to keep him from attacking my face with his usually unwashed hands. These little pimples did not go unnoticed by him.

By the end of my two weeks I saw what I felt was an absolutely noticeable change. When I washed my face before I had gotten to the point where I would feel a mass of pimples under my hand as I rubbed my Burt's Bees chamomile wash into my face. The Burt's Bees left my skin feeling clean but I felt I was getting nowhere in my fight against my regular acne now only made worse by the hormonal rush that comes from being pregnant.

I enjoyed this challenge so much that shortly after a week I recommended it to a friend of mine that I know has also had a long, unsuccessful struggle with acne. If you too have issues with your skin - try this, it works well with more than just oily skin types.

Wordless Wednesday

A pinspired Post - Cloth Baby Wipes

I mentioned in the recent past that a couple of my friends (a couple has now grown to a few) are also pregnant. They've chosen to go the rout of cloth diapering and in addition to that they plan to use cloth baby wipes. The image of mountains of dirty diapers in landfills isn't unknown to those who consider themselves even remotely green. But what about those chemically treated and bleached baby wipes? They're doing the same thing I assure you.

Pintrest is full of the pins picturing cloth wipes but when you click them you rarely seem to get a very detailed description of how to make your own. I'm going to do my best to help you with that.

Today's post was inspired by this specific pin and the info found here.

Buying fabric can be so exciting for me. Having an excuse to do so only makes the experience that much sweeter. I picked up these fabrics for baby wipes.

I'm going to tell you two ways to go about this:

Place an actual baby wipe on top of some uncut fabric (I bought 1/2 yards). Cut out one piece that was the size you now want and then get to work.

I cut two long strips.

Then placed one on top of the other and began cutting the strips intended to become baby wipes. I used the first piece I cut as my template to cut the rest of the pieces.

Another way to go about all of this is to first lay out your piece of fabric.

Fold it over.

It's really your call if you want right side touching right side or wrong side touching wrong side.

Then place your template onto the fabric.

Then cut your strips following the line of your chosen measuring instrument.

I now had three strips, two I intended to use for cloth wipes and one of excess fabric.

Once you have all of your pieces cut the fun part can really begin.

On to the sewing machine!

Place two sheets of your fabric together backside touching backside. Your print should be on the top and the bottom. You should not see the plain white back.

Then use whatever stitch you most prefer to sew the two pieces together.

 This is a great time to test out different stitches on your machine.

Et viola you have a baby wipe.

In case you're wondering how my wipes looked after a trip through the washing machine with their un-serged edges.

I just snipped off the loose edges and put them into a baby wipes container.

Now to make some wipe solution. But that's another blog post ;p

Pintesting - Wee Wee Wigwam

Today's pintest come via this pin and the information found here.

The source of the pin said that you should use a bowl that's 6 - 8 inches in diameter. I used one of our regular cereal bowls

 I had some pre-cut squares left from the last time I made UnPaper towels and decided to begin with using some of those to make wigwams. I set my bowl on top of a piece of flannel.

 And cut out a circle the size of the cereal bowl.

 Using my first piece as a template I went back and continued cutting circles of flannel and terry cloth.

 Then I cut my circles in half.

 When you begin sewing you will want the right side of your flannel facing the right side of your terry cloth so I made sure to have all of my pieces set that way before I headed off to my sewing machine.

 Before I headed off I dug through some of my fabric again to see if I had any other flannels that I thought might be great for this project.I cut some of the camouflage leaving the other flannel for later.

 Sew the top of your half circle with a straight stitch and then flip the now sewn piece "inside out."

 Top stitch along the top of your half circle as close to the edge as you can - again with a straight stitch.

 Fold your piece over with the raw edges facing you and sew them together using a zig-zag stitch.
And that's pretty much all it takes to make wee wee wigwams for your little ones willy!

It's Superbowl Sunday

Worm Delivery

I don't really recommend order worms during a month like January, particularly if you live in any northern state. I knew what day my worms should be coming and kept a close eye on the door for the mail so that I could bring them inside as soon as possible.

The mail was really late that day, which meant the worms had spent all day in a cold, metal, postal van. Thankfully the post man knocked on the door when he dropped them off so I was able to snatch them up before he'd even driven away.

The box was cold. Really, really cold and I was concerned that my worms were dead.

Gotta love how the box says to keep it at room temperature.

As you can see they were packed surrounded by a bit of newspaper.

They were inside the same type of plastic container you can frequently expect to buy bait in. They had ample bedding and plenty of holes in the lid.

 The seller even included an info sheet about taking care of your worms.

When I opened it up the worms on the top weren't moving. Harkening upon my backwoods nature to poke dead stuff with a stick - I poked the worms. They moved. I didn't dig through the entire thing checking each and every worm but since I could see the ones on the sides moving I decided enough of them probably survived the journey.

I put them on top of their new oragnic waste-filled home and closed them up.

When I checked later there were no worm bodies on top of the compost. Kalloo kallay!

Since I was previously having issued with producing what I seriously felt must have been an excess of leachate I've been adding more dry bedding than moist and it's made a noticeable difference.