Little Susie Homemaker

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  • Hibernation

    Sometimes, I want to be a bear. Hibernating during winter just feels right somehow!

    For some reason, this winter, I have felt a bit more like hibernating than I have in the past. Even though we don’t have harsh winters and much snow at home, the colder, darker days just called to me to take things slower and stay home.

    With the fall wrap up of the garden, and heading into winter and getting to stay inside, I have enjoyed spending quite a bit of time in my sewing room (aka, the little bedroom).

    My local quilt shop has an annual UFO (unfinished objects) contest that I decided to do this year. You write down a list of 12 unfinished or not yet started projects that you want to finish this year, with an optional 5 extras and submit it to the quilt shop. They then choose a random number from the list to be finished each month and you either email in photos or can take the item into the shop to show its finished.

    I wrote out my list of just random stuff I wanted to work on or finish with the first 3 on the list almost finished (needed long-arming) and submitted it to the shop. Here we are with February not even finished and I have 10 of my 12 items finished.

    I guess that is one of the perks of hibernating – being able to focus on projects and stay in my sewing room.

    Here are a few of the items:

    This is a pattern I’ve now made 3 times and each of the quilts were gifted to my brothers & sisters-in-law. This gray one was the last one to go and was #3 of my UFO list as I started the year with it needing to be long-armed. It has now been sent to my brother and his wife so I can now show the photo. (The ones finished last year had one that was more yellow and the other was more green. I have enough of the material from the layer cake I purchased to make one more that would be pink)

    This “Chandelier” pattern is one I have loved since the first time I saw it. It was fun to make it once and see how it went together. I’m looking forward to getting this one on the long arm to finish it.

    The scraps of the Chandelier quilt were used for the Dresden pieces to make a spring table runner (pictured below). I hadn’t ever done something with rounded edges and had to figure out how to turn the edges under to sew it onto the square. Thank you YouTube for tutorial videos! I also tried doing some free-motion quilting on my sewing machine. While it was fun to try, I definitely need a LOT more practice to get better at it.

    One of the items on my UFO list was to finish 3 insulated RV window covers. (We need a total of 9, but I thought I’d just put 3 on my UFO list). We plan to be using our trailer more often and in early spring, the weather can be chilly.

    I finished the initial 3, then realized a 4th window was likely the same size and quickly finished the 4th cover. While these aren’t very pretty, they will help insulate around all the single-pane windows to keep the cold air out. Once they are in the windows, we’ll pull the blinds down and won’t really see much of them anyway.

    Since I’ve started quilting, I’ve seen quilt a few “sew-a-long” or “block of the month” (BOM) projects. A pattern is released on a regular basis, and you make that one square before they release the next pattern. It gives you a lot of patterns to try all while building skills and leading to a finished sampler quilt at the end.

    I decided to try the Riley Blake Designs BOM pattern this year. I was able to get all of the material cut and have everything organized by block for the whole quilt.

    It has been fun to try new patterns and see how something seemingly complex can be really simple to put together. Some of the blocks, I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out until I literally pieces the last bit.

    Here are a few more of the projects from the UFO list that I’ve finished (or at least gotten to where they are ready for the long-arm) so far this winter:

    As winter is wrapping up, I’m starting to look ahead to the garden. We’re only a few weeks away from the early, cold-weather stuff being able to get planted.

    Plans for the garden in the next few weeks are to expand the existing rows. Amend the soil (we’ll go pick up some horse manure to spread over everything), and get new supports put up for a couple of things.

    We will also be growing some flowers this year for my step-daughter’s wedding in August. I hope things will actually grow for us so she has a large variety to use for her special day!

    Winter hibernating has been fun, relaxing and needed. As the days are getting a bit warmer, spring is coming and I look forward to what it brings with it this year!

  • Rendering Tallow

    Beef tallow – I see it everywhere these days. It’s getting the bad rap removed and the benefits are coming back to the forefront. Our ancestors used this for so many purposes, and I decided to give it a try.

    Hubby & I recently bought some sirloin and ground beef at CostCo. As the hubby was cutting the sirloin into steaks, he was cutting off quite a bit of fat and throwing it away. I stopped him and told him to save the rest and put it in a bowl. I would render the tallow.

    I then was going to cook up the 5.5 lbs of ground beef and freeze it and decided to use the fat from that as well. (Of course, I poured off the fat before I did any seasoning of the meat)

    (Aside – I cooked up about 3 lbs as taco meat and portioned out into vacuum sealed bags to freeze. And cooked up the remaining and kept it plain to be able to throw into other things that call for ground beef)

    I put it all into a crockpot and let it go on low all day. It didn’t liquify quite as I expected it to, but there was still a lot in there.

    At the end of the first day, I strained it into a bowl and refrigerated overnight.

    The next day, I took the bowl out of the fridge and turned it over onto a cutting board to be able to scrap off the stuff that would have gone to the bottom of the bowl.

    Well, that didn’t go quite as planned. I wasn’t expecting so much gelatin in the bowl, so the fat layer came off the top and gelatin went all over the counter.

    Once I got that cleaned up, I scrapped off the non-fat bits from the bottom of the fat layer and put it back into the crockpot to go for another rendering.

    When I took it out of the fridge, there were small yellow circles randomly across the top of the fat. (You can see some in the picture above) And I knew there would be beef bits hanging out below where I could see in the bowl.

    I’m expecting it will take 3 renderings to get it to the pure white I’m expecting. (But, given that this is likely not grass-fed, grass-finished really cleanly raised beef, there’s a good chance it won’t come out as pure white as I hope it does. Time will tell.)

    (I’m writing this post as I go, so at this point, I don’t know the ending!)

    Day 3 rendering has been done. The tallow still had a beef smell to it but looked right. I did a bit of digging on Pinterest and it turns out to “purify” it, I needed to melt it down with some salt & water.

    After doing that, I poured through a fine strainer into the bowl again and could see a bit of impurities at the bottom as well as water droplets.

    Once it cooled in the fridge and I pulled out the fat, the water and impurities stayed at the bottom of the bowl, and I was able to melt once more to pour into the mold I wanted for keeping it until I use it.

    Since I purified it, I will be able to use this for cooking or making soap or other beauty products. I’ve been wanting to make soap and will likely use at least some of this tallow for that.

    It’ll be fun to use it. There’s something satisfying about making things from other things and not having as much waste or having to go to the store.

  • Welcome to “Little Susie Homemaker”

    “Homemaker” – what does that word make you think of?  a 50’s housewife?  A stay-at-home mom?  A repressed, dominated woman without an opinion?  I hope that none of those are what you think of (at least not the full definition of that word).  According to dictionary.com the definition of “Homemaker” is “a person who manages the household of his or her own family, especially as a principal occupation.”   

    While not my principal occupation (yet), homemaking is something I love to do & aspire to make my principal occupation.  That’s where this little thing called a blog comes into play. 

    I love everything about home – decor, cooking, baking, sewing, etc. I’ve come to enjoy cooking from scratch.  I try to live debt free & love to find new ways to be frugal.  All of these things (& much more) all fall into homemaking.   

    A home is more than a structure.  A home is a refuge, a resting place, a sanctuary.  My home is my place to recharge, relax, invite & entertain. 

    Welcome, come on in.  Make yourself at home.