Make Your Own Peanut Butter (or any other nut butter)

Making your own peanut butter is super easy.  You can buy bulk peanuts at a grocery store or Costco (I buy them in the bulk bins at the Giant Eagle Market District at Settler's Ridge - love those bulk bins!).  I buy the XL roasted peanuts without salt.  Just dump them in the food processor and turn it on high and stand back and watch the magic!  Process until it is as smooth as you want.

That's it!  Add salt to taste.  You can add honey, cinnamon or whatever else takes your fancy.  You can do the exact same thing with almonds, cashews, and sunflower seeds or whatever you like.

Condensed Milk Painting

I found this idea on Pinterest awhile back while looking for ideas for entertaining the kids.

The older Little Man likes to paint.  A lot.

He would paint everyday if I would let him.

This is a super easy thing to do, however, if you don't want condensed milk everywhere, 

I suggest towels on the floor and close supervision. 

It didn't take long before we were painting on our bellies.

That is usually the best way to paint, according the the younger Little Man.

Bath time immediately afterwards is necessary, at least at our house,

but that just means that you can start painting

faux goatees and temporary tattoos, courtesy of Daddy.

They had a blast, so we'll most likely do it again.

Outside sounds like a grand idea.

Anyway, just mix food coloring into condensed milk.  The mini muffin pan worked great.

It takes rather a long time to dry, but it dries thick and glossy. 

It stays sticky for awhile, though, so you can't really stack them up afterwards.

Don't leave them on the floor, or your dog will try to lick the paint off.  Ha ha. 

It sort of crystallized a bit after awhile too, so I scanned these in order to save them.

I am thinking I'll put a selection of our paintings into the annual photo album,

Then I won't have to feel guilty about tossing them at some point.

As you can see from the last photo, there was plenty of paint left, 

so one can is more than enough.

More Striped Quilts

Hello again.  I've been quilting some more.  It just takes me a lot more time that it used to!

After I made this quilt for my nephew, I figured I'd make a couple more for my kiddos.  They liked the puppy on it and were excited about having one themselves.

It is pretty easy and quick to put together the top.  This time I hand stitched on the applique and I embroidered their names on the bottom. 

I had trouble with quilting the first one.  The top just kept wanting to shift down, so by the time I got to the bottom edge, it had shifted a good half inch or so. What in the world?  I swear I used to be better at this quilting thing.  I finally figured out that I needed to adjust the pressure dial and I took it the whole way down to zero before it seemed to work okay.  It turned out alright, though.  I just had to trim the sides down a little more than I wanted to.

And wouldn't you know it?  The older Little Man didn't even want his quilt.  In fact, he came right out and said so and he wanted it off his bed.  I was annoyed with him so I asked if I should just throw it away then.  He said yes.  So I folded it up and its been in my closet ever since.  The younger Little Man could care less about his either.  Figures.  They really would rather have "cozy" blankets instead.  Whatever.

To be fair, he does have the hand quilted quilt on his bed and he's perfectly happy with it.  Perhaps he just couldn't see a reason for having another one.