Omi's Stew, Canned

My husband's Omi had the most amazing recipe for oven stew.  It's chunky, it's full of flavor and it's so so good. The only down side is that it takes 5 hours to cook, therefore we don't have it very often because I never remember to put it together before noon.  So I made a huge batch last night and canned it all.  Now we have Omi's stew ready to go at a moments notice.  Yay!

Recipe for Canned Stew: makes 13 pints.

6 lbs cubed stew meat cooked (lay in roasting pan in single layer, cover with foil, bake at 350° for 30 min.)

9 russet potatoes in 1" chunks

3 onions, quartered

2 C. celery, chopped into chunks

1-2 bags mini carrots, cut in half (short and fat, not long and skinny)

Add all that to the biggest pot you have along with a little water so it doesn't burn on the bottom.

Heat until hot, but veggies will still be crunchy

Spoon into hot sterile jars.

Sauce:

4 Cans Tomato Soup

4 Cans Water

4 Tbsp. Sugar

4 Tbsp. Salt

1 tsp. Pepper

Mix together in large saucepan until hot.  Pour over meat and veggies leaving 1" head space (I didn't leave this much and it leaked in my canner.  So prevent a mess and leave the 1"!)  

If you run out of sauce top each jar with a little water until full.

Cover with hot sterile NEW seals and the rings.  Process in Pressure Canner ONLY at 10lbs pressure for 60 minutes.  (follow canner instructions)

Once jars are cooled and lids have sealed label each with the contents and the date.

Although you might be tempted don't add any sort of thickening agent to the sauce.

Blog-a-versary Winner

Thanks to everyone who wished us a Happy Blog-a-versary!  We've really enjoyed doing this over the last year.

I know you're all here for one reason today and that is to discover the winner of our giveaway.

Here we go... Random Number Generator from random.org says...

And the comment number 3 belongs to: 

MINDY!

Congratulations Mindy, we'll be contacting you shorty about your winnings.

Thank you to everyone who participated, we hope you'll come back often.

Kristie and Holli

Happy Blog-a-versary!

Guess what! Live Learn and Love it is 1 year old today!

Hurray!

Happy Blog-a-versary!

To help us celebrate year #1 we decided it would be fun to do a giveaway!

One of you lucky readers will win a set of WINTER blocks! The winner will get to chose whether they want the blocks finished or if they would like a kit so they can make their own.

(Please note that we have not made the WINTER verison yet, but here is what the other seasons look like :)

TO ENTER: All you have to do is leave us a comment with your name, email address, and what your favorite project from our blog is. We will give you until Tuesday, Oct. 25^th to enter! We will post the winner on Wednesday morning! Good Luck!

Only 1 entry per person please :)

Thanks for being such wonderful readers! We love you guys!

Love,

Holli and Kristie

Child Reward System

We have a slight problem at our house... the problem is about 3 feet tall, blonde, and 3 years old!  She believes that she is the "man of the house" when Daddy's not home.  It feels like constant war at my house just trying to get her to help out, clean her room, and be nice to her sister.  In talking to my co-blogger Kristie, she gave me the idea for a rewards system.  

Stone Jars.

Amazingly the girls are loving this.  Stones are SO Exciting!

How to Work a Stone Jar

1. Take two mason jars, remove seals, but keep the rings.  

2. Place a square of fabric over the top and glue it to the ring with hot glue

3. Decorate as desired. (I cut an X in the top of each for easy deposits.)

4. Purchase your stones, Mine are the type usually found in flower vases, purchased at Dollar Tree

(you can use marbles or any type of token)

5. Any time the kids do something good give them a stone (i.e. brushing their teeth, cleaning up their toys, helping with laundry or dishes, sharing, saying please/thank you... etc.  My youngest gets one every time she goes potty in the toilet.)

6. Let them deposit their own stones

7. Offer an Ultimate reward once their jars are full and make it sound really BIG!

(my kids get a solo trip with Daddy for Ice Cream this time, 

next time it might be a dollar store toy or something like that.)

8. Don't take away their stones unless it is very well deserved and well warned.

(kids have a hard time understanding why you're taking away what they're so proud of.)

9. Once the jars are full and the Ultimate reward has been issued empty the jars and start again.

Practice Makes Perfect, My Apron

I really really want a Pink John Deere Apron for the kitchen.  Really Really.  So I had no idea how to make one, and I wasn't about to buy a pattern.  So I bought some cheeper, but still cute fabric and make a practice apron.

It's a little bit skinny at the top, by like 2 inches. 

It has no pockets, mostly because I didn't have time.

The neck strap and the ties need some interfacing to keep them stiff.

I really like the ruffles, but I think I want to make them bigger.

Other than that I like it.  

I have everything I need to make my perfect apron, except the time.

Maybe I'll find it soon.

Just a Little Bit of Canning :)

I've only done a little bit of canning this year....

Okay... So Maybe I got a little bit carried away.

from left to right: Raspberry jam, Peach jam, Blueberry jam, Pickles, Pear jam, Applesauce, Strawberry jam, Apple Jelly, Apple Pie filling, Salsa, and more applesauce

So far this year I have canned:

28 pints of various jams

  (raspberry, peach, blueberry, and strawberry) 

which added to the left over jars of apple jelly and pear jam I had from last canning season.

18 pints Salsa

11 pints Apple Pie Filling

1 pint pickled Banana Peppers

and

23 Quarts + 11 Pints of Applesauce

Next week I plan on canning some stew for the winter and possible some pie pumpkin.

Alphabet Quilt Finished

Wow!  Two Months!  Talk about a leave of absence.  September was an insanely busy month and to tell the truth October isn't a whole lot calmer.  On the bright side, I got DH back from his 4 month patrol in Africa, that was a joyous day.  We had 2 weeks of vacation, 1 week of visitors, and the other 4 week just trying to get back in the swing of things.  I haven't completly stopped crafting, jut haven't had time to post.  I managed to finish my Alphabet Quilt for my neices birthday.

Here's the finished product:

If you enlarge the picture you can see the stitching in the 6 all white blocks, there's a large cupcake stitched in each one with "happy colors" as I call them. 

This quilt was really easy to make.  Each square is 6" and each letter is 4 1/2" tall.  I used my Silhouette SD to cut the letters using their fabric interfacing. I appliqued each letter onto a white square, obviously, then machine stitched it down.  Peiced the rows together and hand quilted around each letter.  Then I cut a stencil of a large cupcake using my Silhouette SD and used that to trace and hand quilt the cupcake in the remaining white squares.  After the quilting was done I binded it with the continous binding. 

It was that simple.  Anyone can make it.  ☺  If you don't have access to a Silhouette you can trace letters by hand onto an interfacing such as Wonder-Under then cut and applique that way.  A great present for a child just learning to recognize letters and how to read.

Stay Tuned!

Stay tuned for lots of fun new projects coming your way! I have started working on some homemade Christmas presents! (I am SO excited!)

-2 different skirts

-homemade "pretend food"

-kid sized oven mits (to go with something they just might be getting for some big holiday coming up)

-and much more!

Be Excited! It will be fun!

Fall Blocks

I figured it was about time that I posted a picture of my Fall blocks. Here they are! I glued popcorn kernels around each letter. I thought it turned out cute!

A Muppet Feet Kind of Day

Today has been a muppet feet kind of day. The temps here in Utah dropped into the 40-50s today. So when I got up this morning and was freezing I decided it was time to break out the muppet feet! The comfiest socks you will ever wear! I think I have about 12 pair that I wear all through the fall and winter! Go get yourself some....you'll love them!

In addition to it being a muppet feet kind of day, it also happened to be the day that my landlord scheduled for us to get new doors. My house dropped down to 61 degrees. I was shivering....every time I tried to talk it was all I could do to not chatter my teeth. I love the changing seasons! So I put on a sweatshirt (over my jacket) and wrapped up in a blanket and decided it was time to update my blogs. :)

Celebrate!

It may seem like I have fallen off the Celebrate wagon, and I may have a little, but the real problem has been I have forgotten to take pictures :) I have re-commited myself to Celebrating a little each day and hopefully more pictures will come! Here is one picture from our making Halloween pumpkins and spiders out of paper. My daughter hung them all over our basement. It looks quite spooky down there! :)

What have you been Celebrating?

Recipe Book

I finally got around to finishing my family recipe book. Hurray! All I did for my book was type in all the recipes I had floating about my kitchen on random scraps of paper into a word document. Then I went all crazy with fonts and sizes and spacing and all sorts of fun stuff. Then I printed them out on white cardstock, hole punched them, and stuck them in a binder. I used one of those 1/2 sheet binders (I love it!) Then I made dividers with different colored paper and Wa-la! A recipe book!
How do you sort your recipes?

Fall Word Picture

First pick a picture of the object you want to create. I used a leaf picture. I made it the size I wanted on my computer program and then put words on top on it. I used Photoshop....it is my love on the computer. :)

Once you are done, print it out and put it in a frame.

And put it somewhere you will see often! :)

Now I am not going to lie, but I have absolutely no idea how to upload a file so you can actually print out this very leaf word picture. So I am going to talk to my computer nerd husband and see if he can help me out. If I can get it to work I will happily post it so you can print your own! If not, feel free to ask questions and I'll help you out as much as I can.

We're Back! Hurray!

Wow... so sorry we have been such slackers! It has been a crazy busy last few weeks! Hope you all have had a great time while we have been away! Now you should prepare yourself for several new project posts! :)