Eat Make Grow: Blog Hop #9!

Welcome to this week’s Eat Make Grow Blog Hop where you share what you have been eating with your family, growing in your garden or making with all your creative impulses. Eat Make Grow is a collective link party that is shared across three blogs and runs every Thursday-Tuesday. Whichever blog that you choose to link up your post, it will show up on all three sites! Eat Make Grow is a way to share with many people posts about your domestic doings, whether that’s growing veggies, hosting parties, sewing, mixing up cleaning supplies, or trying out a new recipe. We want to learn about it! Every week, we will feature the most popular link, and one chosen by the the host. This week, your host is me!

Your Hosts:

Miranda from Pocket Pause
Marigold from Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky!
Foy from Garden. Cook. Write. Repeat.

We’re not big fans of rules so there are just two of them:
No big corporation or business advertising or promotional posts. Let’s not dilute Eat Make Grow with junky posts. We don’t mind helping out the little home grown businesses of independent bloggers or handmade merchants (Etsy, etc.). **We will be deleting any spammy posts**
Please link your posts back to one of the hosting blogs. This is a common blog hop courtesy. This link helps build the Eat Make Grow community by sending your readers to all of the other participant’s posts. We will feature two posts each week and we will only consider posts that have a link back. A text link is fine, or you can grab this button and put it anywhere on your blog:

Grab the code from my sidebar!

 

Who doesn’t love a good DIY? Lazy people, i guess. Our blog hoppers must not be lazy in that case, because our most popular post came from  Brown Thumb Mama. Her submission last week had some great ideas for projects you can do at home yourself, including this yummy looking taco seasoning. I’ve been making all of my seasoning blends for years. Although i love that addicting MSG flavor, i’d rather not sprinkle it onto everything i eat.

As some of you may know, among my multitude of businesses and homesteading skills includes soapmaking and concocting other herbal remedies. I make and sell herbal salves, but they really are so easy to make yourself! I have yet to try using plantain (a common and very soothing herb/weed) but love calendula and chamomile. Maybe These Light Footsteps will try a new blend sometime soon. Check out her great post (including links to info on Plantain) on how to make a healing salve right at home. Fancy tins not necessary, but certainly attractive and professional looking.

Is one of these featured posts yours? Grab our “Featured Blogger” button to post on your blog and show off how cool you are. You can also visit our Pinterest Eat Make Grow Featured Bloggers pin board to see some of our past favorites.

Grab the code from my Sidebar!
And as a reminder, PLEASE remember to add a text link or button for Eat Make Grow to your blog when you link up. We’ve had to pass up lots of great posts to feature because of not having a backlink :(



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Willy Wonka’s Factory?

Not a chocolate river, but certainly some type of elixer is flowing through this contraption….

Any idea what’s going on in this photo?

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Storing Onions using Pantyhose!

This post is one of my faves from the last days of An Austin Homestead. I miss those lovely ochre walls, sigh.

Storing onions in pantyhose is a great way to affordably pack up your onions to prevent them from molding. Pantyhose can be spendy – so watch for sales and check your local thrift stores for cheaper options. I had these pantyhose on hand for felting and for supporting my husband’s gourd fruits in the backyard. My friends thought my hanging onions look a bit like a modern art piece. I tend to agree.

It took me at least 15 minutes or more to pack up all these onions, which is much less time than braiding and makes for pretty sturdy parcels. It looks really cool, and using the onions is convenient: clip off the bottom onion and the next is still knotted in. I also crochet cool produce bags that work well, but the more contact the onions have with each other the greater the risk of rot.  A root cellar would be nice, but wouldn’t a dark, cool hallway look awesome lined with some of these hanging onions? Some of the sweet onions are already getting mushy, so i set those aside in the fridge and will use the rest of the sweets first. The reds should store a fairly long time.

I’m notorious for planting onions and forgetting what variety and how long they’re to be stored, so next onion planting season (which will hopefully be of a huge crop of onions) i’ll be sure and write down all the information on each variety planted: maturity date and storage time so that i know which onions to cure and store and which to pile joyfully into my face right away. Now, i’m not at all sure where i’ll be storing these guys en route: i’ll need a coolish place so they’ll probably ride in the cabin of the moving van or somewhere in the car that’s driving.

** Oregon update** These onions lasted the trip great! I hung them around our camping site, brought them in from the car on hot nights and they arrived to Oregon safely. In fact, i was using these onions for almost a YEAR after our arrival! Check out this ridiculous picture from last June during our move.

What’s your favorite method of storing onions? Have you ever tried pantyhose?

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Fiber Friday: BABIES!

We’ve got babies on the brain in my family these days, and no – i am not expecting. My sister had her little bundle of joy last week and named him Logan, which means i shall henceforth be calling him “Wolverine” (dorky x-men reference). Little Wolverine is already stylish and settling in nicely. My mama is up on her first Grandma visit and reports that he’s a “good baby” and my sister is rockin’ her new role of mama.

Doesn’t he look swell in his first Auntie-made hat? I think so, and i can’t wait to knit him more cute garments as he grows and supply him with an arsenal of handcrafted felt toys (whether he wants them or not!)

Speaking of baby toys: i’m developing a new line “For Small Hands” at my Etsy shop and would like a few more babies and toddlers to use as my test subjects. Are you a mama, dadda, auntie or granny? Leave me a comment to nominate yourself to test out and review a felted (quasi Waldorf inspired) toy for the beloved babe in your life. I’ll choose 1 to three lucky readers to send a toy to keep in exchange for some nice photos of the babe in question playing with my toy, and a brief review on his/her opinion of the thing.

And continuing to speak of baby related items: this week’s featured Fiber Friend is actually 2 friends in one! Two Welsh Corgis spin round and round after a tennis ball and baseball in an eternal game of not-quite-fetch. This mobile is perfect for the Corgi lovin’ family (gotta get that obsession going early!) and is sure to please parents and kiddos alike. Held into the air with hearts, these two Pemmies are full of love and can’t wait to stand guard over your crib.

That little red/white girl made my audibly giggle repeatedly as i finished up her details. So cute. I may not be able to sell these guys, after all. 😉

So, comment away baby lovers! I can’t wait to send you a special handmade toy for your bairn to test out. Please comment with your location (city/state) and an idea for an interesting critter to feature on my next mobile.

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