Apple heads - guest post by Jeannine S.

OK, so after a trip to the local apple orchard, we ended up with four large bags of apples. Naturally we had to process them as quickly as possible. We made apple butter, fresh apple pies, apple dumplings, over 2 gallons of dried apples and a fresh apple coffee cake. Guess what? We still had quite a few apples left. So, being a mean and crotchety old lady, what better thing to do with some of them than dry them into apple heads. (The mean and crotchety part comes in because after they are dried, they have scowling faces and look like mean and crotchety old folks.)

We are going to make them into unusual Yule decorations, (witch heads, Santa heads, might even have a Grinch head.) Its very easy to dry apple heads. The apples need to be peeled and NOT cored. Push a wire through the top and out the bottom. The wires can be taken out later if you wish. To shape the face, use a teaspoon and roughly carve out eye indents, a nose and a mouth. If you have small beads or small “googly” eyes, you can push them into the apple at this point. Now comes the hard part, you have to let them dry. You can use the wire to hang them over head and out of the way. Ours have dried for about one month and are finally ready to finish. I dip the heads into clear polyurethane to seal them and then once again, let them dry. Now, you can add paint, hair, hats or any other items you think they can use. If you're really feeling froggy, make a cloth body and using the aforementioned wire, fasten it to the head and make a complete applehead doll. Then, you can let your creative juices flow and make clothing for the doll, etc.

The fun part is that you are never sure how they will turn out. You think they will look one way and the end result is totally different.

Winter activities

Since we really couldn't spend much time outside this winter, we created things indoors.  If I just relied on my memory, I wouldn't think we've done that much, but here's the proof in pictures.

Making string ornaments

Our family values list, prominently displayed

The 2nd annual ginger bread house

A 2nd tiered cake, which we made after making one for my sister's shower

My first knitting project (yep, a scarf)

My friend, the lucky recipient of the scarf.

Baby quilt sections sorted out - the squares were cut out by my older sister, and I finished the project

Finishing the top of the baby quilt

A "forest" made of string and construction paper leaves & flowers to encourage spring to come.

Crafty times at Main Street Homestead

Now that my MIL has moved in with us, there's much more going on in the area of arts and crafts.  I'm a much more practical person, and with as much as we have going on all the time, we don't get to many crafting sessions with the girls other than coloring in coloring books.  We generally don't ever make anything.  But, that's changing.  Nini, as she is referred to, is very crafty.  She sews, paints, and other crafty things.  She's already made the girls some adorable tulle tutus.

Here's some of the other crafts that are added to Main Street Homestead now that Nini has joined us:

Painted gourd bird houses

Canvas bags sewn and painted with cute animals

We decided to make some fairy doors too, and here's a picture of our 3-year-old helping her Nini paint them.

Naturally dyed eggs

It's that time of the year for dyeing eggs.  After reading about all the harm that artificial dyes cause, I thought a post on dyeing with natural ingredients would be a great idea.  Though we're not getting around to dyeing, some friends of ours posted some beautiful pictures of their eggs, I had to ask if I could share them on the blog.  They are absolutely gorgeous. 

The photo credit goes to Anne Marie Forrester and she participated in making these lovely eggs.  She explains what was used to make these colors.

The terra-cotta colored eggs are boiled in a pot FILLED to the top with brown onion skins (and water), the green ones are boiled with 1/2 cup of Yerba Mate, the yellow ones are boiled with a handful of Tumeric, the lovely purple comes from 2 TBS of logwood, the blue ones were pre-boiled and soaked overnight in purple-cabbage water. We were also making hibicus-colored eggs after this photo was taken.