Making Butter Homemade Butter from fresh cream

This is my week of learning how to use whole milk products ~ oh the joys of the expanding waistline! This is the only milk that myself and one daughter can drink without having tummy aches or staying close to a bathroom.  ha ha.

  First things first, butter.  Just take cream and shake.  Easy enough.

Once whole milk has settled, you see an obvious line of cream on top and milk on bottom.  Just use a ladle to carefully get your cream.  Glass jars are a must if you don't want your milk going bad.  I remember Mom sterilizing all her jars with boiling water.

Girls insisted we "shake it the old fashioned way as it is more rewarding"...Mei started out excited.

Still excited...

Passing the jars around, a little excited ~

Now not so much!

We gave up after over 30 minutes of arm numbing shaking.  I poured the bubbly brew into the blender and in 2 minutes...butter!

The foamy-type butter curds float to the top, ladle them out with a slotted spoon into your cheesecloth.  You can also just pour the blender full into a cheesecloth-lined colander that sits in a bowl. Then your buttermilk ends up in the bowl and butter in the cloth. If you don't have cheesecloth, use a sheer curtain or sheer material, even nylons?  Keep the watery stuff, it is your buttermilk and makes lovely muffins or biscuits.  Put in a glass jar and refridgerate.

Press this with your slotted spoon and soon you'll have a nice blob of butter to squeeze out!

This is when you could salt it a little.  Some add cinnamon, or herbs for speciality butters.

 

This is when you could press it with a pretty mould, etc.  I made one blob in the shape of a heart.

This is unsalted.

Watch for the next post on mozzarella cheese making, yogurt, cottage cheese, cream cheese etc.

Use the buttermilk to make blueberry muffins for a recently widowed neighbor.

A weaving we will go ~

A neighbor here has a lovely little weaving studio above their shop and we decided to use up a bunch of denim I had been saving.  Girls could make a great little rag rug and it would be fun and educational and local!  Yeah for us.

Figuring out how many strings, pattern design, etc.

So off we went to Unni's for some lessons in the fine art of weaving on a loom

Brought a friend along, she is a hoot!  Here she is trying to get the yarn off her fingers!  Silly girl had purple fingers!

Basically an old pencil sharpener used to wind up spindles

Goofs.  2 peas in a pod.  Kate and Kate

One way of starting to measure out the length needed for the warp. This is what you end up with to put onto the loom...long and tedious and yet very rewarding work!

Unni has fun little felted animals hanging around the studio.

The second way of measuring out the threads and getting the design.

Putting it onto the loom, threading each thread through a little heddle.

Ready for the shuttle.  The first step is doing just thread to hold everything together at the end of the rug.  you'll notice it on the picture of the rug.

Ruth's nearly finished rug, ready to braid the ends.  You can twirl them, whatever.  Notice the read thread from above, it is holding everything tight and looks great with the denim.  The white threads are just spacers, they come out, as you braid the rest.

Finished product, with bonus dog we are watching.

The other girls are still working on theirs, so I'll update when they are complete.

Thiessen Ark ~ Animal Sitting services!

Well, first it was the offer to bunny sit, then fish sit, and now 2 dogs have joined the mix.  The bunny was because I really wanted to give it a trial go and see how we fare with a bunny.  I had a dear black bunny "Hop-a-long" when I was 3-4 years old and loved that thing dearly.  He would hop a long beside me and want up.  We napped on the couch together, played together while my siblings were in school.  He was a good, clean bunny until Mom moved the couch and discovered little round chocolate "raisins"...ha ha.  One day as he was in the Holly Hocks (flowers) an owl must have got him.  So sad.  Now 31 years later, I am giving it a trial by bunnysitting a friend's little bunny.

We've been learning lots about rabbits.   How it's nearly impossible to tell the gender before they are at least 3 months old.  At 3 months old they are also very fertile.  No wonder they reproduce so well!  ha ha.

He likes carrots and lettuce.  I thought he was so cute sitting under the computer desk, but have just discovered he has left a few presents for me!  ha ha.

Other than that, he is super easy to care for, and super cuddly too.  Guess they can be litter trained too.

American Girl dolls join our family

Pardon the scrape on Mei's nose from sledding.  Kit is her look-a-like American Girl doll and she is so pleased.  She had saved and saved.  She came up to me the other day and said "Mommy, did you have a doll that was sorta alive? My Kit seems alive to me."

Kate's doll.  We will start fixing up her hair soon.

 Girls had made up some bunk beds and the dolls are wearing some new outfits we have sewn already.

 Josefina and Kit with Ruth and Mei

American Girl doll gets repair work done SURGERY

We ordered this little Kit American Girl doll from Ebay with Mei's hard earned puppy cash (Nana paid them a little for all the playing and training they did on the puppies) and when she arrived her hip was out.

We did a quick search on YouTube and found out we could repair her ourselves.  A little surgery was in order!
Good thing my hubby has a Bach. of Nursing degree!  ha ha.  We were forewarned that when we would remove her head, it would feel like we were killing something, and yes, we turned her face away!

First, check the patient's vitals.  Heart, pulse, temperature etc. to ensure she is up for the surgery.

Next, remove the strings that hold her next in place.  Turning her away from you is a nice bonus.

 Start removing all that stuffing, there is a lot of it!  place it in a container so you doesn't get all over the place!

Play with the head if you are so inclined!

 This is what the joints look like inside the doll.  The "wick" elastic string pulls the legs up so-to-speak.  The brass clamp sometimes gets pulled up, thus, loose limbs.  Easiest is just to put elastic around the string, underneath the clamp.  This tightens up the limbs ~ voila!

Daddy's Leatherman always comes in handy!

 Wrapping elastic around and around and around!

Kit watches her surgery.

Wrapping.

Stuff all that stuffing back in, paying attention to getting a nice little bottom...ha ha.  It happens naturally, we just stuffed in all back in and she looks great.  Put the head back on with the string and she stands perfectly!

Kit, as good as new!  Hip repair complete!  Limbs Repaired!  Happy owner!

The ole' BUCKET List

For those who are unaware of a bucket list, it is really just a list of things you would have liked to experience before you "kick the bucket", pass on...die.  I have a bit of a running bucket list in my mind and thought I'd share some of it.

~ get married
~ have babies
~ own a home
~ garden
~ show my girls an ocean
~ travel Canada and US with a camper with my family
~ Disney world or Disney land
~ travel somewhere outside of Canada with just my hubby
~ eat sushi
~ go to Starbucks
~ see my girls grow up, marry and hold my grandbabies
~ make a quilt by hand 
~ go wedding dress shopping and try on a wedding dress in a store
~ have a pedicure or manicure at a salon
~ drive in a monster truck
~ drive in a convertible ( I rode in Uncle Willards once)
~ adopt or help someone else adopt
~ attend a homeschooling conference with my family
~ visit my Dad's grave with my children (Ontario)
~ see a baby be born
~ eat Chinese take out from those cute little boxes
~ take lessons in ball room dancing/ swing dance with my hubby
~ get my ears pierced ???  ( I have tried this one before, but they grew in so fast, but my hubby likes it, so we'll see)
~ hand out a random amount of cash to a random person walking down the street
~ attend a music concert

The crossed out ones are accomplished.  Checked off.  That is the bulk of my bucket list.

What does yours look like???