Homemade Living: How To Make Pomanders

Have you ever made pomanders or clove oranges? I've seen them before but never made any myself, so this year I decided to get some oranges and cloves and create some of my own.

It's really easy and straightforward to make your own pomanders. All you do is gather your choice of fruit (you can use oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes, tangerines, etc) and stud them with whole cloves. You can get creative and make designs on your fruit, or just completely cover them with cloves.

I found that it was helpful to use something to pierce the fruit and create a hole for the cloves before trying to insert them into the oranges (much easier on the fingertips!). I simply used an ink pen, but you can use anything you have on hand to make your pilot holes. This can also help if you are trying to make a design on your fruit so you can line up your cloves in a certain pattern.

You can also tie ribbon around your pomanders and hang them on your Christmas tree, but I chose to just display mine on a platter. The scent of the pomanders is amazing and apparently if you shake your clove studded fruit in a bag of powdered orrisroot (found at health food stores) the fruit will dry evenly and retain its scent for up to a year!

I got my whole cloves at our local health food store in the bulk spices section, so they were really inexpensive. And of course you can find a bag of oranges anywhere, so this is a great frugal way to decorate for the holidays. They also serve as a fabulous all-natural air freshener with no chemicals whatsoever! Every time I walk past the pomanders I get a hint of the scent and it just screams holidays to me. I think I will make these clove oranges for years to come!

~Tammy

This week in the Homemade Living series, I am joined by Mary and Jackie in posting about how we incorporate homemade items into our lives. Next week Daisy, Staci, and Sue will be up. If you have some free time, please check out the other posts in this weekly series!

Drying Herbs From The Garden

Over the weekend, David transplanted our herbs to a new location. We planted them last year in our main vegetable garden, but needed to move them to make way for our new raised beds and revamped garden plans this year. The herbs had grown really well and were starting to come back strong, so we decided to bring some of them inside to dry.

I've seen so many cute images on Pinterest of herbs hanging in kitchens, so I wanted to do the same with several bunches of thyme and oregano. I just tied the bunches together with kitchen twine and David made a garland of sorts to hang on the Hoosier cabinet. I love how it turned out!

To dry herbs, all you need to do is hang them upside down until they are completely dry then remove the leaves and store them in a container. My herbs were grown organically, came from my own back yard, and weren't dirty, so I didn't wash them before hand. If you do wash them, just be sure they are totally dry before bunching together. I've read that some people find it useful to put each herb bunch in a paper bag to catch any dry leaves that fall off but I've never tried that myself.

We saved some dried basil from our garden at our old house several years ago, and it is still good! So apparently dried herbs can last years if dried and stored properly. Dried herbs wouldn't necessarily go bad, but they may lose some flavor and potency over the years. But our basil is still going strong!

Have you ever dried your own herbs? What method do you use?

~Tammy

Shared with Home Sweet Home, Farmgirl Friday, Tuesday Muse, Backyard Farming Connection Hop, What To Do Weekends, Tweak It Tuesday

Quick & Easy Fall Wreath

Inspired by a photo I saw in a recent Better Homes & Gardens magazine, I decided to make a mum wreath for my front door. We haven't done much in the way of decorating this fall and I thought this would jazz up the entry way a bit. First, I gathered my supplies - artificial spider mums, wire cutters, and a foam wreath.

I simply cut each flower off the stem, leaving about 1/2" to 1" so that it would stay in the foam securely and placed them all around the wreath.

The flowers on their own would be pretty enough, but I thought it would look even better if I added in some of my feathers I've collected (go here to see how I used feathers in the past). So after I had all the mums in, I placed some guinea feathers in between the flowers. Then, I secured the wreath to a long piece of ribbon I had in my craft bin, and hung it on the door.

I really like how it turned out. I think the dark spotted guinea feathers add nice visual contrast to the white spider mums. Even better, the total cost was under $10 and only took about 15 minutes to complete. Now that's my kind of project!

~Tammy

Shared with Mop It Up Monday, Tweak It Tuesday, Clever Chicks Blog Hop, Barn Hop, Repurposed Ideas Weekly, Mix It Up Monday, Backyard Farming Connection, Share It, Show Me What You Got, Down Home Blog Hop, Country Homemaker Hop, Cottage Style, Tutorials & Tidbits, Eat Make Grow, Farmgirl Friday, Thursday Favorite Things, Home Sweet Home, Creative Things Thursday, Old Time Party, Simple & Joyful, Sunny Simple Sunday

Dried Leaves

Earlier this week, David was cleaning up part of the woods since it is a mess after logging this summer. I went to check his progress and found a big branch with beautiful bright red leaves just waiting to be scooped up. I grabbed the branches and headed back to the house.

Since collecting and drying leaves is one of my favorite fall crafty things to do, I pulled off the best looking leaves and brought them inside to dry. Basically all I do is place the leaves in wax paper in between pages of a big, heavy book. Usually it takes about a week for them to be pressed flat and ready to use.

I love to collect leaves from different places that are important to me. When I was young, I'd collect leaves from my grandmother's house. More recently, I have dried leaves that I saved from our first home. I made a garland out of those leaves and every fall it goes up on our headboard (mentioned in an earlier post here).

Aside from drying the leaves, I think the branches make great decorations as well. It's a good way to bring the outdoors in and add a touch of natural fall decor to your home.

I'm not sure how long the leaves will stay good inside, but it will be beautiful while it lasts. As long as the cats don't get to it first!

~Tammy

This post is shared with -

Feathered Friend Friday

Welcome to our series "Feathered Friend Friday." Every Friday I write a post with interesting facts, photos, or funny stories about our chickens and guineas. If you need to catch up, you'll find all the Feathered Friend Friday posts here.    

It's that time of year again.

Molting season has begun. I found a big pile of fluffy feathers under Buttercup's spot on the roost a few weeks back, so I knew she had begun to molt. She is still losing feathers, but I think she's winding down because now some of her wing feathers are falling out. Her tail feathers will be next, then her body will be in full feather production mode.

I have lots of feathers that I've collected over the years and I've always wanted to display them somehow. I decided this year to do just that with one of Buttercup's small feathers. 

I bought a picture frame with a mat and wrote "Buttercup 2012" in freehand on the mat. I wanted to use a fine point sharpie, but we only had the wide tip version so that's what I ended up using. I had a piece of gray felt left over in my craft bin, so I used that as the background for the feather.

I really like how it turned out and may frame some more like this in the future. Until then, I'm on the lookout for other creative ways to display my feather collection. Any ideas, fellow feather collectors?

~Tammy

This post also featured on Stacked Stone Farm.