Christmas in My Shop

There's only a couple days left before I close up my shop for the Harvest Hills Alliance Craft Sale and Tea and after that all shipping deadlines will have passed for any international orders to make it on time for Christmas so I thought I'd do a "Christmas in my Shop" share.

snowflake booties

snowflake hair clip

reindeer hair clips

white snowflake baby booties

nordic baby booties

There are a few more Christmas themed items but you can see them all here

Home Made Bagels! (as requested)

Alright you all asked for it (yes you guys on facebook) so here's the recipe for bagels!  As you can see this batch is whole wheat, but you can make them all white too if you prefer. (the first batch I did was white, second batch whole wheat, they were both fantastic)

Bagels!
2 cups warm water
3 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. white sugar
5-6 cups flour (more or less depending on if you use white or whole wheat)
4 tsp. active dry yeast

Stir together yeast, sugar, and warm water and let proof for 10 minutes (till it's dissolved and foamy)

Put 4 cups of flour and salt into a stand mixer and combine.  Pour in yeast mixture and let it mix using the dough hook.  Add more flour until you have a somewhat dry dough.  You don't want it to be too sticky.  Let the mixer knead it for about 5 minutes.

Place your dough in a greased bowl and cover it with a lid or a damp cloth and let it rise till doubled.

Kneed dough down a couple of times then cut it into 12 equal pieces.

Take each piece, roll it into a ball and then flatten it.  Poke a hole in the middle and then even it out.  It's kind of hard to explain so I took a short video of me shaping one.  It's the first time I've tried to video myself so enjoy, haha!

Once you have all your bagels shaped let them rest on the counter (dust some flour down first if your dough is at all sticky) for 10-15 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Meanwhile, get a large pot of water boiling.  You need a fairly big pot but if you don't have anything big you can just boil them in smaller batches.

Once your water is boiling, add in 3 tbsp of sugar (more or less depending on the size of your pot, mine was quite big)  The sugar just gives your bagels that nice caramel color when baking.

Drop as many bagels into the water as you can fit without them touching each other.  Boil them for 45 seconds then flip them over and boil for another 45 seconds.

Transfer the bagels to a dry towel for a few seconds, flip, and then place onto a cookie sheet dusted with either cornmeal, wheat germ, or parchment paper.

Get a bit of butter melted into a bowl then lightly brush the bagels with butter.  Sprinkle them with salt, or cheese, or poppy seeds, whatever you like.

Finally you bake them!  For about 25 minutes or until they are well browned all around.

Enjoy!

Kid Pics

How do you get nice pictures of your kids?  Me? I bribe them with M&M's

Shop Love - Baily Belle

I think I missed doing a Shop Love feature last week but this week I want to share with you the fabulous shop Baily Belle!  Vanessa is another one of the amazing folks from my team Curation Nation on Etsy and she makes some pretty beautiful stuff.

Braided Tribal Bracelet

Blue Batik Circle Scarf

Brass Triangle Earrings

Arrowhead Necklace

So go check out the rest of her stuff, and make sure your read her shop announcement!  She's having a sale!!

Handmade Halloween

A little owl...

A viking!

So happy with the shield daddy made him!

Apparently only Brayer wanted to get into the pictures, but here's the lowdown on their costumes.  Hats: Cutest Bean Around (my friend Jenn made them) Vests: I cut up an old couch blanket and sewed them up. Shields: daddy made them with wood, paint, leather, and bolts. Wood sword: daddy made after that same Jenn who made the hats got one for Kaed for his birthday.  Stuffed Sword: I made that about a year ago.  They also wore the fleece cloaks I made for their ranger costumes last year.

Here's how I did the owl costumes:  I made a really simple pinafore dress and stitched on scrap pieces of fabric cut out into little ovals.  Real easy, slightly time consuming, and super cute.  Hat is a polar fleece that I used the boys' viking hats as a pattern shape for.  (the shape of the hat plus horns worked great as ears) Then I just stitched on felt eyes and a beak.  My sister Meg made one for her daughter too.  So cute!

And our pumpkins!

Pumpkin Puree

 Pumpkin Puree from your Halloween Pumpkin!

  Do you ever wonder what to do with the pumpkins you carved for Halloween after the candy filled holiday is over?  I'm guessing most of you compost yours, or even throw them out but did you know you can use them to make your own pumpkin puree?  Pumpkin puree is good for so many things, muffins, pumpkin pie, soups, baby food and it's really pretty easy to make. 

I hate throwing any potential food out so despite the fact that turning those carved pumpkins into puree is a bit of work and quite time consuming I do it anyway.

Here's how I do it.

Pumpkin Puree

Cut away the carved portion of your pumpkin.  This part you'll want to compost just because it gets real dirty when you're carving and you may have used ink or other things to draw your design on first hand.

excuse my poor lighting, I did mine early early this morning and forgot to check my white balance before I started shooting

Next you'll want to cut the rest of the pumpkin up into medium sized pieces.  I slice from the top all the way down in about 3-4inch pieces.

Now you'll want to cut off all the very inside layer of the pumpkin.  It looks a bit stringy and is often a bit scorched from the candle.  Make sure you cut away any pieces of candle wax that may have dripped on your pumpkin.

Chop the big pieces into smaller squares and lay flesh side down onto a foil or parchment lined cookie sheet.  You can forget the foil or parchment if you want but you'll spend hours scrubbing your poor cookie sheet after.

Pop your pumpkin into an over preheated to 350 degrees and bake for at least an hour.  Check your pumpkin after about 45 mins, if your fork pushes into it really easy it's done.  The timing is really very dependant on how small you chopped your pieces.

Once your pumpkin is done cooking, let it cool almost completely.  Then scrape all the flesh off of the outer peel into a large bowl.  I did two pumpkins and ended up needing 2 huge bowls for all the yummy pumpkin I scraped out.

Lastly you'll want to blend your pumpkin up in batches in either a blender or a food processor.

I freeze mine in 2 cup portions so I have the perfect amount for pumpkin spice muffins ready.

There you go! You made your own pumpkin puree!

Just in case you were wondering what this pumpkin looked like before I chopped it all up....