Strawberry Apple Butter

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3-4 cups strawberries- remove stem
2 apples, cored and cut into chunks

Blend, chop or food process the apples and strawberries together until smooth. (Smoother than this picture shows)

Pour all of this into a big pot and mix in:
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4-1/2 tsp cinammon

Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Then reduced to a simmer and stir ever 4-5 minutes. Cook for 30 minutes or until it’s as thick as you like.
Pour into jar, (if canning, do the canning process now) and allow to cool. If you’re not canning then store in the fridge.

This makes a really small batch which is great to do with the price of ALL food increasing. It made just enough for us to have a nice change away from Apple Butter now and again.

~Jess

Placemat.

Don't forget to enter my Blogoversary Giveaway, click HERE to enter and best of luck!!!

Daisy only gets fed once a day. Some might say I’m starving her but she use to be extremely overweight. When she developed an allergy to red food dye the vet told me what food to switch her to and to only give her an 1/8 of a cup of food a day. You read that right, an 1/8 of a cup. That’s HALF of a 1/4 of cup. Crazy really, but it worked. About three months after her diet Daisy dropped her excess weight and hit her goal of 14lbs instead of the 21lbs she was carrying around. Look at the difference.
Before:

After:

Due to the fact that she only eats once a day, she constantly knocks over her food bowl as if asking for me. It drives me bananas. I’ve bought her food bowl placemats before but they aren’t the cutest things and she’s still able to knock her bowls off of them and make a ruckus.  I made something, that so far, has stopped her noisy habit.

You’ll need:

• 2 outer pieces of fabric cut 13'' x 17''
• 1 piece of interfacing or terry cloth cut 13'' x 17''
• 4 pieces of outer fabric or coordinating fabric cut 2'' x 17''.

(Iron your pieces before you get started, unlike myself, that didn’t get out the iron ONCE for this project, shame, shame.)

Gently knock the cat off your fabric.

Now make a fabric sandwich, the bottom outer piece place wrong side up, next is the terry cloth piece, then the top piece of fabric goes right side up. Line up your corners and pin everything in place, pin the edges and in the middle as well. If you’re going to machine quilt this, the more pins the better.

Quilt however you like. I did a triangle design. Starting at one of the corners and going towards the right in a diagonal line. When I reached the bottom edge of my fabric, I turned the fabric around to go down at another diagonal line. Over and over and over I did this until I got the look I wanted.

You can see where the triangle/diagonal lines start and stop in the pic below. (I hope!)

Set this aside and pick up the 4 strips of fabric for your binding. If you don’t know how to make your own binding it’s really simple.

Lay one strip right side up, and horizontal. At the far end of the fabric, take another strip and lay it wrong side up vertical, but over the edge of the horizontal strip. You’ve made a square with the two pieces of fabric on the corner…see?  Now sew a diagonal line from the top of the ‘square’ you’ve made the the bottom right corner of the ‘square’ you made.  It should look like this:

When you turn the vertical piece of fabric up, it will extend your previous strip as if it were one piece.

Do this with all 4 of your pieces until you have a long piece of binding ready to go. Press with an iron, unlike the slacker I am. I’ll de better next time, I promise!
Now, with the right sides together, pin the binding to the front of the quilted rectangle. Miter the edges.

Sew all the way around. Then turn the binding out, like so.  Your front piece should look like this.

If you flip your placemat over it should look like this.

Fold the edges of your binding over to touch the edges of your quilted piece.

Press with an iron and then fold over again. (Sorry I guess I forgot to take a picture of this step.) Pin in place.
Now turn the entire thing over and sew the binding in place. Try to sew in the ditch you created when you first sewed the binding on.

Press one last time with an iron if you like and voila you’re done!. A super cute placemat for your dinning room table…

…or your pet.

After all, Little Ms. Skinny Daisy needs a nice place to chow down too.

               

A day of posts.

Another way I'm celebrating my 3 years at Frenzied Mutterings of An Odd Duck is to fill Wednesday with a day full of new posts from me. I've been working on the posts and projects for weeks now for this lead up. That's why all has been quite on the forefront here.

Here's a little taste of what you'll see come Wednesday.

Learn how to turn jeans into a funky curtain. (Super cool)

Rain barrel makeover. (Super Green)

A pattern and tutorial on the best purse I've ever owned. (Super fantastic!!!!)

Strawberry Apple Butter!!!!! (Super yummy)

How to quilt and sew your own place mats. (Super cute)

How to make your own candlewicks. (Super easy)

Make sure you check back a few times Wednesday to catch all or one of the posts you want to see/learn/or read up on. :)

Blogoversary GIVEAWAY!!!

To celebrate Frenzied Mutterings of An Odd Duck's 3rd year anniversary on Wednesday, I thought I'd venture into the world of giveaways.

Included in this giveaway is:
A copy of Design it Yourself Clothes

 If you want to know how to sew a perfect-fitting dress, a T-shirt, a button-down shirt, and an A-  line skirt and pants PLUS the art of pattermaking this you want a copy of this book. It's easy, clear instructions and has many different variations of the clothing listed above.  

A copy of Altered Style

This neat book teaches you how to create denim bags, scarves, and hats from a pair of jeans and how to use belts as purse straps and change a pair of jeans into skirts, tablecloths into vests and many, many more projects and ideas.

A pink and brown purse made by me. :)

To enter this giveaway leave a comment to have your name entered in the drawing once.
Want your name entered in the drawing twice? Become a follower.
Want your name entered in the drawing three times?!?! Post a link to my giveaway on your blog and email me at Jessicamg@gmail.com to let me know or let me know you're linking up in the comment you leave below.

This drawing ends MONDAY, March 28th so comment, follow or link up quickly!!!!

A Night of Miracles.

Isaac is a picky eater, always has been, hopefully will not always be. Evan Grace will eat almost anything and Mackenzie is old enough to get over it..

I’ve been having a lot of migraine’s lately, I’m not sure why and I’m keeping my fingers crossed I don’t have to go to the doctor to figure it out either. But last week, while suffering from a doozey of a migraine I wasn’t in the mood to do much for dinner so it was going to be taco’s for Mackenzie and Isaac and Broccoli and Cheese soup for Evan Grace and myself.  I had never made it before and I had a super easy and quick recipe.

Start with 4 cups of chicken broth
2 cups of milk
and one can of condensed cheese soup.
Wisk them all together in a large pot over medium heat, until the soup lumps are no longer lumps.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

You can use a fresh head of broccoli or frozen. I had a bad of frozen florets on hand so I steamed them, along with 1/4 cup of chopped onion, while the soup was heating up in the pot.

Give the broccoli a rough chop and add this and the onions to the soup mixture and stir until heated thru.
Then add in 2 cups of cheddar cheese. Yummm.

I like a thicker soup, so I added 2 tablespoons of corn starch to the mixture as well. Heat until the cheese is melted and the corn starch starts to thicken everything.

Then if you want to be really fancy, serve in a bread bowl. This soup/recipe is going in the ‘make monthly’ stack, it was fantastic and quick, and made enough for leftovers the next day, which is always a plus in my book. 

Here comes the miracles: Isaac asked for a taste of the soup. I dished him up a small bowl, then the kid proceeded to eat 4 bowls of the stuff. I’m serious, he was eating like it was his last meal. He even went for the bread so he could dip and enjoy it a different way.

Then if that wasn’t enough, Evan Grace actually asked for and ate an entire taco!!! something she’s never been really fond of.

Will wonders never cease?

Never Too Young...

...to fix the family scrambled eggs. She looks older than 5 in this picture doesn't she? Oh, and the eggs were delicious.

Deep Fried Cupcakes.

That's the correct title. I promise. I was a little surprised myself when I came across this recipe. It's a wonderful recipe. Really, if you love cupcakes then this recipe will take your love to the next level.

Make some cupcakes, any flavor, any size. I knew these were going to be rich so I went with mini-cupcakes so I didn't send my kids into a sugar coma. Put some icing on them too or maybe a ganache. I forgot to take a picture of them all iced and ready to go. I went with chocolate on chocolate.

Now you're going to make a funnel cake batter. In one bowl mix together: 2 eggs and 1 1/3 cup milk.
In another bowl mix together: 4 tbs sugar, 2 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder.

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the milk and egg mixture and mix until smooth.

Bring a few cups of oil to a high temperature OR if you're lucky enough to own a fryer do whatever you need to do to use that instead.

Now pick a cupcake, any of them, and dunk it in the funnel cake batter. (Sorry no picture, it's much to messy to dunk and take a picture of it at the same time.)

Fry for a few minutes, making sure to turn it over, until golden brown.

Remove from the oil and set to drain on some paper towels. Sprinkle with powdered sugar immediately.

Yum, look at the inside of that. Isaac fell in love with these and kept asking me how I got a piece of cake inside of a doughnut. :) It's magic, or maybe that's just how they taste.

Crazy.

Things at my house are crazy here of late. Mackenzie missed two days of school last week due to tonsillitis. I got sick over the weekend, extremely sick for it not being the flu and now Evan Grace is coming down with a combination of the two. I've not gotten anything done other than feed and nursing kids back to health. I'm watching Isaac for any sign of getting sick and so far so good, but I'm not naive enough to believe that he'll escape it much longer.

Looks like Daisy is the only nut in this nut house that's feeling fine.