Pine Forest Baby Blanket

 I've been spending a lot of my free time knitting up a special present for a new member of our family!  My cousin and his wife are having a baby very soon and we are all so excited!  I wanted to make them something special because this is the first baby in the family!  They are waiting to find out the gender of the baby until he/she is born so I searched for a gender neutral pattern for the blanket.   The baby room is so cute!  It is owl themed and gray and blue so I also wanted to keep the same colors so it would match!

In the end I picked out Pine Forest Baby Blanket which is a free pattern on Ravelry!  The pattern was so easy to memorize which was great because if I didn't work on it for a few days I would still remember the pattern when I picked it up again.  I used really thick yarn and larger needles to make the blanket go faster.  Because of school I did not have all the time I wanted to work on it so I needed it to go a bit fast.  In the end I still ended up giving it to the parents later then I wanted because I had to order more yarn.  I used Baby Bee Yarn in the color Toy Elephant!  It is super soft!

Knit Nerd is also working on the Pine Forest Baby Blanket!  It is so fun to see someone knitting on the same project as you and also feeling a little bit overwhelmed by it as well!

I really wanted to make a cute tag for the gift as well with washing instructions.  I had some old owl fabric given to me by a friend and I thought it would be perfect because it matches the theme of the baby room!  I had a bunch of old mat board scraps from when I worked at the art gallery so I used one of them for the card and then I cut out two owls, a boy and a girl one, from the fabric and simply hot glued them onto the card.  If I had more time I would have loved to go out and get letter stencils to make the lettering look nicer, but overall I think it came out okay!

I am also working on another gift for a friend of mine so I cant post any photos, but you can see some of the early progress of the project on my instagram.  Hopefully it will be done soon so I can post some photos!

Endless Tomatoes = Endless Sauce

 The garden has been doing really well this season!   During the summer I wanted to try to grow a bit more of a variety other than the tomatoes we always grow.  So I jumped in and decided to try peppers, kale, romaine, spinach, and broccoli!  My spinach, romaine, and kale did awesome until a rabbit came and ate them all.  I did manage to same some of my kale which I have under crates now so the rabbits cant get to them and they are doing a lot better.  At the beginning of the season my pepper plants started out really weak and I figured they would not grow.  I decided to leave the plants in and see what happens.  I was so excited when in late September I had a nice big green pepper!  Something similar happened with my broccoli and now I have about 5 heads of broccoli growing!  Its so exciting to see my plants prevail!  I didn't think they would grow! 

We have two small gardens on either side of our house.  The peppers and kale were planted on one side and the broccoli on the other.  I had the Romaine and spinach in containers.  Our tomatoes were planted on both sides of the house.  We have about 12 tomato plants growing at once, mainly because my dad and brother devour them once they are ripe.  My mom and I have other plans for our tomatoes though.  

There is only one thing to do when you have endless amounts of homegrown tomatoes and that is to make tomato sauce!  This recipe is perfect for using up all of those homegrown tomatoes and perfect for putting on homemade pizza! If you are not a gardener do not worry!  You can also score cheap, ripe tomatoes at the grocery store.  They are normally marked down in price because they are too ripe to sell within the next few days.  Just remember once you buy them you will need to use them up fast!  This recipe is very simple and you can easily alter it to fit the amount of tomatoes you have on hand. 

Homemade Tomato Sauce

for Pastas, Pizzas, Rice, Soups, Stews, ect. 

(Best with very ripe homegrown tomatoes)

*Note:  This recipe has you keep the skins on the tomatoes while cooking.  If you do not like the skins in your sauce then see the note towards the bottom of the recipe.

Ingredients: 

2 Cloves of Garlic

1/4 C Olive Oil

1 tsp Crushed Red Pepper (can add more if you like)

8 Basil Leaves

2 Tbsp Tomato Paste

Approximately 2 Pounds of Ripe Tomatoes (can use less, or more)

Pinch of Salt

Pinch of Ground Pepper

Crush the garlic with a garlic press (If you do not have a garlic press you can finely chop garlic).  Put in bowl until later. 

Wash and rinse tomatoes,  On a cutting board cut up the tomatoes into small pieces.  They do not have to be perfect cuts since they will be cooking down.  Put all tomatoes including the juice and seeds into a bowl.  (If you do not like seeds in your sauce then you can strain after cooking.)

In a sauce pan add olive oil and garlic and cook on medium heat until you can smell the garlic (about 1-2 minutes)

Add in the tomatoes, crushed red pepper, salt, and ground pepper. Bring the pot to a simmer and let the tomatoes cook down.  This could last anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on the amount of tomatoes you have.  Remember to stir often.  

Once tomatoes are cooked down rip up the basil into small pieces and stir into the pot.  Continue to cook for 3 minutes.  

Once done you can either strain the sauce to get rid of the seeds, or you can keep the seeds in.  ( I personally do not mind the seeds in my sauce but sometimes there might be a bit too much so you can strain either half the batch or the whole batch of sauce)

This sauce stores very well in the fridge or in the freezer.  You can make large quantities and store for later.  It is perfect for pasta and pizza.  I even use it in soups and chilies sometimes.  

*Note: If you do not like skins in your sauce you will need to blanch the tomatoes and peel off the skin.  First boil a pot of water.  Put each tomato in the water for a few seconds.  Take out the tomatoes and place them in an ice water bath until cool.  Once cool you can slice a part of the skin and easily peel the skin off.  Then cut up the tomatoes into small pieces and continue with the recipe. 

*If sharing this recipe please link to this page. Thank you!