Peach Pepper Jelly

This is a fairly easy recipe and tastes great served over cream cheese and eaten with crackers or even over brie that has been warmed in the oven.

Ingredients:

1 cup chopped fresh peaches
3/4 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup seeded chopped fresh jalapeños (green or red)
2-1/2 cups cider vinegar
1 cup water
2 oz. package of dry pectin
6 cups granulated sugar


Directions:

• Using a blender, blend peaches, peppers, jalapeños and 1-3/4 cup cider vinegar until finely ground.
• Pour the mixture into a heavy bottomed pan.
• Rinse your blender with the remaining 3/4 cup of cider vinegar and 1 cup of water, then pour it into the pan
• Stir pectin into the pan and bring it to a full rolling boil over high heat. Stir constantly.
• Add sugar. Continue stirring, returning it to a full rolling boil for 1 minute.
• Remove the pan from heat and skim off any foam.
• Ladle hot jelly into sterilized half pint jars.
• Leave 1/4" head space in the jars and wipe rims.
• Place hot lids on top of the jars with rings.
• Proccess in a canner with boiling water for 5 minutes

Adventures in: Repurposing an Old Window

At a local market, I stumbled upon a repurposed window, that took on a new life as a chalkboard- cool, right? So of course I had to try my DIY hand at a similar project.

Mom had this old vintage window frame, that she had found years back that was originally a part of a building on my great-grandfather's farm.

As you can see, it was worse for the wear, and had chunk of it missing. I gave it a preliminary sanding job and off I went to Home Depot to pick up wood putty and a putty knife. I used the putty knife to build up the missing pieces and let it sit for 24 hours to dry. I then re-sanded the gem and built up some more areas that needed a bit more putty. Did I mention that this project took me days?

Eventually when it had all dried and was built up in all of the right places, I used my favorite $0.98 spray paint from Home Depot.

Once it had dried, I went to visit my grandpa to help me cut the metal for the top and bottom cut outs. When I cut out the cork board I realized that it was too thin, so I had to back it with cardboard. I then used a hot glue gun to put them in their places. It looks great in my laundry room!

Adventures in Sewing: Pillows

I recently got some new couches... did I mention that I LOVE them? I just didn't especially love the fabric selections the company offered for pillows. So I ordered plain ones that match the fabric of the couches and set myself to the task of making some of my own.

After hitting up Jo-Ann Fabrics (with a coupon of course!) I found home decor fabric (heavier than cotton) that coordinated nicely with the new rug that I purchased. I then measured the pillows that came with my couches, to see what the dimensions of my homemade pillows needed to be. Turns out they needed to be 20"x 20".

In order to get my finished pillows to come out to a whopping 20" x 20", I needed to add a quarter of an inch to each of the sides in order to account for a seam allowance. I traced this out on a piece of tissue paper, so that I could make a pattern. I then laid out the pattern and the fabric and cut out 8 pieces (this is so I could make a total of 4 pillows). To stiffen up my pillows, I also cut out 8 pieces of fleece interfacing.



I put the pillow fabric right sides together and then placed the fleece interfacing on the outside of that.



I then stitched around the edges using a 1/4" seam allowance, and leaving a 4" gap on one side so that I could turn it right side out for stuffing.



To make the seams lay more smoothly, I trimmed close to the seams and clipped the corners.




I then turned the pillows right side out and pushed the corners out to make them look more crisp. Then I repurposed fiber-fill from some old pillows that my mom no longer wanted. Once the pillows were stuffed, I hand stitched them shut, which resulted in this!

Trash to Treasure: Table

One of my favorite hobbies is to go thrift shopping (thank you Macklemore for making it cool again!).

When I was at Goodwill a while back I scored this gem for 7.99. It was a little worse for the wear, as it was missing its drawer-see the gaping hole?



Side note: My parents are all-stars for many reasons.

Example 1: See the board sitting on top of the table? They cut that down for me (read: I'm a giant chicken when it comes to power tools).

This is about the point where my documentation of this project fell apart, so please bear with my verbal description of what I did to that lovely table.

First, I sanded down the surface of the yellow table and the board, as there were a few spots that had paint drips. Once I had it sanded, I wiped it down with a damp rag **This step is so, so important, so that you don't seal in the dust!

I then went to Home Depot and got a few cans of their cheap-o, but still does the trick, flat black spray paint for $0.98 a can. 3 cans later, I had the whole table coated in black. Mom and I then tag teamed the adding of the board... it required more of my favorite things...power tools- thanks, mom :)

After that I went to Anthropologie and picked out a drawer pull, so that I could make the board that we added look like a faux drawer. The pull was the same price as the table, so the whole project cost me around $19, which is a WHOLE lot better than what a similar table would have cost me brand new- plus I was able to personalize it with the adorable pull :)

Blog Readers

Grad school has temporarily (or maybe not so temporarily) taken over my life. I hope to get back to fun projects and deal sharing soon :/ But please know I have some cool projects that I am wanting to attempt. :)

Back to School Finds: August 19-25

Walgreens

Elmer's Glue
$0.49

Elmer's Glue Sticks- 2 pack
$0.49

Filler Paper- 130 sheets
$0.69

1" Binder
$0.99

Sharpie Marker
$0.39

Crayola Colored Pencils
$0.99

Expo Markers- 2 pack
$0.99

Bic Brite Liner Highlighters- 5 pack
$0.79

Sharpie Find Point Markers- 12 plac
$4.99

Walmart

Spirals
$0.17

Composition Books
$0.50

CraZart Markers
$0.50 - I'm passing on these- I'm a crayola girl through and through.

Elmer's School Glue
$0.50

Elmer's Glue Sticks- 6 pack
$1.97

Bic Pens- 10 count
$0.97

Office Max

Protractor
$0.05

Composition Book
$0.50

Papermate Mechanical Pencils
$$0.75

**10 Free folders with a $5 purchase.

Office Depot

2 pocket folders
$0.01

Slider Pencil Box
$0.01

Office Depot Pencils- 8 count
$0.25

Scissors
$0.25

Binder Clips- 12 count
$1

Post-it Filing Tabs-24 count
$2

3 Hole Punch
$4

** Buy 1 Get 1 Crayola Products

Fred Meyers

** $10 off coupon (in-store) on Shoes

Filler Paper- 150
$0.75

1" Binder- Anti-Microbial or Biodegradable Binder
$1.99

Pencil Pouch
$0.50

Composition Book
$0.50

Crayola Crayons
$0.49

Crayola Colored Pencils
$0.99

Buy One Get One On:
Dividers
Avery 4 pack highlighters
Ticonderoga Pencils- 12 pack

Target

PaperMate Mechanical Pencils- 3 count
$4

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Shopping for birthday presents (or any presents) can be pretty difficult. I always want to make sure I find something functional but not totally boring.

Enter: Pinterest.

Earlier this week I was perusing and stumbled on this little gem a.k.a. an adorable candy bouquet. Immediately I thought that it would be a perfect/fun gift for my dad.

I was convinced that just arranging candy in a fancy manner wasn't enough of a gift for my awesome dad. So after collaborating with my friend Melissa, I decided to stick a gift card to a restaurant in there.

I knew that I wanted to use Junior Mints to cover part of the base, so I measured a box of them first and then went on my way to JoAnn fabrics to purchase a styrofoam block used in flower arrangements.

Then I hit up Fred Meyer for LOADS of candy and BBQ skewers.

When I got home I busted out my hot glue gun (seriously, if you don't have one you NEED to go out and purchase one STAT). I then used the hot glue gun to attach the box candy (Junior Mints and Good & Plenties) to the styrofoam floral block.

After the block was finished, I hot glued all the other candies (and gift card) to their own BBQ skewer.

The next part was a little scary because I didn't want to end up with a billion holes in the styrofoam block- so I had to make sure that I carefully selected and placed each candy skewer.

Since the gift card was really the most important part of the gift, I chose to make the it the center of the arrangement,so I placed it first. I then carefully positioned the rest of the candy skewers in the styrofoam block- placing them carefully so they camouflaged the other skewers. Naturally, there were always going to be some showing, so I inserted tissue paper to do some more disguising.

To make a smoother transition between the box candy vase, and the skewer arrangement, I decided to hot glue a ribbon around the top of the boxes... I was going to add a bow, but I had great difficulty in creating one, so I decided to scrap it in the end.