Cranberry Orange Chutney - A Recipe

I love cranberry sauce.  Not so much the stuff that comes in a can, but the real stuff.  I've made some in the past using a recipe from a friend and it was really good.  This year for Thanksgiving, though, I decided to try something a little different and created my own recipe.  And since I'm not the best cook, imagine my surprise when it came out PERFECT.  At Thanksgiving my husband and I basically had to force people to try it because they said they didn't like cranberry sauce.  And you know what?  They LOVED mine. 

So I thought I'd share the recipe and attempt recipe writing for the first time.  If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

Cranberry Orange Chutney
1 1/4 cups apple juice or apple cider
1/4 cup orange juice (fresh or not, doesn't matter)
1 cup granulated sugar (more or less to taste, we like it kind of sweet)
2 bags (about 4 cups or 1 lb) cranberries (you can use fresh or frozen)
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1-2 tsp fresh orange zest

Put the apple and orange juice in a saucepan with the sugar, heat on medium-low heat stirring occasionally until sugar is completely dissolved. 

Add the rest of the ingredients and stir over medium-low heat until the cranberries collapse, about 15 minutes.  Turn heat to low and let the sauce thicken, about 5-10 minutes.  Taste to see if it needs more orange juice, spices or sugar.  Remove from heat and once it has cooled some put in a bowl or shallow dish loosely covered in the refrigerator.  Let cool and it will thicken up. 

 

 

 

Here is the sauce before taking off the heat.

If anyone tries my recipe please let me know how you liked it!

Sleeper Makeover

My baby Grayson is 9.5 months old.  He's short and he's chubby.  And he has short legs like his daddy and big brother.  What this means for clothes is it's hard to find things that fit him well.  Onesies that fit around him are too long.  Same with pants.  And sleepers are awful because his feet get pulled up in the legs and then he just gets mad being all tangled up inside his pajamas.
Well I found the PERFECT solution for this.  I mean, it's really truly brilliant.  And I really wish I could take credit for it, but I can't.  I found The Jammie Fixer Tutorial over at No Big Dill and I knew I had to try it.  I went to Joann's and they had rib knit on sale so I grabbed half a yard for just over $3.  And the amount of material I used for one pair of jammies was so small I could easily fix 10 more pairs with what I have left.  So not only is this a great fix, but it's inexpensive and easy, too.

Go check out the tutorial at No Big Dill for more details, but here are some photos of the process that I took.

Cut the foot part off of the jammies.  I did this right under the elastic in the back so that I could keep that.

I cut the rib knit, folded in half and sewed a straight line to make a tube.

 Then I folded it with the seam inside (wrong sides together), slipped it over the foot right sides together and pinned. 

 Then I did a zigzag stitch all the way around being careful to take the pins out and stretch the fabrics as I went.

A comparison of before and after.

And here's my little monkey in his jammies!  

The flash always makes him blink.

 He loves them!  They're still a little long, but the new cuff keeps them from going over his feet...and he's been crawling around in them and they have yet to go over his feet. 

PJs!

Today I made the boys matching flannel pajama pants using this tutorial to help me!  I really love the way they turned out and I adore this dinosaur construction crew fabric I got at Joanns.  Both have an elastic waist, and the baby even has elastic around the ankles to keep them from moving too much.  My husband even wants me to make him some pajama shorts with the leftover fabric (I don't have enough to make pants his size).  I think I'm going to attempt a waistband with elastic AND a separate channel for a drawstring for him using this tutorial so that he can get them tighter.  My yoga pants have seen better days and should be retired so I'm going to make myself a pair of PJ pants out of a pretty floral bed sheet I found tucked away and I'll try my hand at putting a cuff on the bottom of those.

Starting anew....again.

I know, I know, I said it all before.  I'm going to finally keep up with my blog! Only to write one post and forget about it.  But now that my baby isn't so much a baby anymore (he's almost 3!) and I have a NEW baby, I really want to have somewhere to journal all the things they do that probably nobody other than family cares about, but I want to remember forever. 

Also, someone recently gifted me a sewing machine - she had inherited it and didn't want it! - and what started out as me wanting to do small pinterest projects for the kids has turned into so so much more.  I finally have a hobby, something for me to do outside of my role as wife and mother, but something I don't have to go out of the home for (which is great because I rarely have the time to go anywhere, especially without my kids in tow).  So I want to use this blog as a way to keep up with my progress with my crafty side.

It has only been a few weeks but I've made a few things already that I'm proud of.  Most aren't good enough to sell, but good enough for a beginner like me (actually better than I had anticipated), and good enough to gift to friends and family.  I'm learning about quilting right now and I'm so intimidated by it but I have to get my feet wet at some point, right?  Reading about it and watching videos aren't going to produce a quilt, I have to actually do some sewing.  And if it turns out crappy, who cares?  I'll hopefully learn from it and do better next time...and even better the time after that.  My first goal is to get good enough to make a quilt out of the baby clothes that I have saved from my boys. 

Say Cheese!

This is what we call his "cheese" face.  He'll tilt his head back, smile like this, and usually squint his eyes. 

Anyways, I'm trying to get back into my photography.  It's always been a hobby of mine, people always expect me to have my camera and I'm always taking tons of pictures.  I get it from my mom, we love being able to look back at pictures and bring back memories of a certain event or time period. 

I've been getting my camera out more and more, playing around with it, getting to know it again, learning what I can by blogs and tutorials online.  There's much room for improvement, but I'm getting better!

We had some new friends come over for lunch last weekend and they have a 7 month old son Chase.  He's such a doll I just HAD to take pictures of him.  So we took him out to my back yard and sat him on a blanket and I started snapping away. 

They're not perfect.  I know I still have a lot to learn and a lot of practicing before I'm where I want to be with my art.  But they're better than I was last year.  Any improvement is a success, and even when I make mistakes, I learn from those mistakes and try to improve for next time.  And hey, they liked these enough that they want to hire me to take their family Christmas photos! 

Stupid Allergies

Connor, our 9 month old son, has eczema.  Really bad eczema.  He was diagnosed with it at 8 weeks old and has been to the doctor countless times, tried numerous creams and oils and even saw a dermatologist and was allergy tested.  A few weeks ago my husband and I went on a marriage retreat in SC (thank you army!) and we brought Connor with us.  His eczema cleared up 100% within a day and a half.  With no medicines or creams or anything done on our part to try to get rid of it, it just cleared up.  Completely.  Just by being away from home.
So that got us thinking.  It's not our house because we just moved here in June and he's had his eczema since around February/March.  The only thing that made sense was our dogs.  The doctors had been telling me that you can't develop an allergy to pets so young, it wouldn't cause eczema, etc.  Then my friend found this article that says otherwise.  And when we came home from the trip, his eczema came back within a day and a half.  And it came back with a vengeance.  A patch on his face got infected and because his immune system was working so hard against the infection he ended up with a rash all over his belly and back.  So back to the pediatrician we went!

He got put on an oral steroid, an antibiotic, and a new steroid cream for his body.  We also found someone to watch our dogs temporarily so we could deep clean the house and see if having them gone helped him any.  And to top it all off (as if that wasn't enough as it is) we had him blood tested for allergies again, this time testing pet dander and a ton more food and environmental allergies.  (Before, we'd had him tested for wheat, eggs, dairy and nuts, all of which were negative.)  The tests showed no allergies.  But guess what?  He started to clear up with the dogs gone.

After coming off of the steroid we waited to see if it came back.  If it did, then it was the steroid making it stay clear.  After a few days he was still clear!  So after a week and a half of the dogs being gone we let them come back home.  And wouldn't you know it, within just a few HOURS his eczema started coming back.  Within 24 hours he had a bad patch of it on his face and the rash was back on his body.  So we made the decision to find the dogs new homes. 

It wasn't easy, we've had the dogs since they were puppies, 5.5 and 6.5 years.  They were our kids before we had our own human baby.  But Connor HAS to come first, and I couldn't let my baby suffer just because we were selfish in not wanting to give up the dogs.  I tried finding them a home together, but couldn't.  So the big dog went to the home of the people who watched them for that week and a half.  They have a large fenced in yard, and another small dog for her to play with.  The chihuahua went to a friend of mine, she has a young son and another dog for him to play with.  I couldn't have just given them to anybody, I couldn't have given them to a shelter.  I know that these people are giving them good homes and that they're happy.  And it's now been a few weeks and Connor is MUCH better.  We're in the process of deep cleaning the house and getting rid of any trace of dog.  We went to a friends house over the weekend and they have a dog, so his eczema came back a little bit, but it's manageable, and with his ointment it's starting to go away. 

We miss the dogs, but Connor is a much happier baby without being itchy, and without having sores from scratching.  And I'm happy that I fought for my son, did my own research, argued (nicely) with the doctors, and FINALLY figured out what was causing his eczema. 

9 Months!

My son is changing...so much, so fast.  He's now 9 months old, he's walking, he's 24.5 lbs, wearing mostly 18 month clothes....I can't believe how much he's grown and changed.  I feel like before I know it I'll be sending him off to school. 

Ignore the messy house....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVgKSo1ekKI