A line of shoppers was out the door of a modest storefront and went down the block. The front window had a sign that read, "Absolutely no Christmas music played inside."

Last edited Mon Nov 2, 2015, 02:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Those little bottles people use in baking cookies and whatnot, that sell for 2.39 an ounce.

I grow black raspberries, so I'm making black raspberry extract now. If it works out well, I'll branch out into other flavours.

I used a quart of black raspberry juice and a 750 ml bottle of 100 proof vodka - cost so far, under $15. I'm thinking I'll wind up with somewhere around 50 ounces of extract when all's said and done. That would run me around $120 or so to buy in the store at 2.39 an ounce. I'll still have to buy some bottles to put it in, but it's homemade, it's a flavour that's next to impossible to even find, and I'm guessing even with the bottles, I'll have spent about 25% what it would have cost me to simply buy it to hand out.

The jellies (and jams I used to make) are not as much of a saving. The jars, pectin, wax, and sugar all add up, so I don't save too much, but at least again, they're homemade from organic berry bushes and a flavour that's more rare on grocery shelves.

(I like black raspberries because they're pretty easy. Once they get established, you just basically ignore them until it's time to pick them., then, after you pick them clean, you cut down the stalks that had raspberries on them, and leave the ones that don't, because those are the ones that will have raspberries next year. Bush cherries are also low maintenance, it looks like, just starting to get more fruit off the one I planted around 4 years ago.)

ETA - Just ordered the bottles to put the extract in. $11.44 per dozen 4 oz bottles and caps, so my cost to make each 4 oz bottle of extract will come in at $2.20, just under 25% of store-bought cost, so I was dead on in my guesstimate.)

i had (old place i stayed) yellow and red raspberries

never did extract from them

did raspberry wine though and that turned out nice

(Alcohol is a trigger for gout attacks.) But that raspberry wine does sound yummy. I used to have red and black raspberries, but the reds got entirely overrun by the blacks, and now I only get a few red berries a year, and maybe a double handful of golden a year since the canes I planted there are still in early days. But I got 11 gallons of black raspberries this year. I've still got one gallon of berries in the freezer, but put the other 10 through the food mill to generate 11 quarts of black raspberry juice that I froze. I'm only using one quart for the extracts, so I've still got a heck of a lot left to make jelly with. Not even sure I want to make that much jelly, heh.

My siblings are all grown, and I'm the only one with children, and they are grown. One sister does give our parents something each year, and another will sometimes, but they are the ones with money.

I want to get all our remaining family pictures and put them into scrapbooks for my mother. Many of these photos are damaged, or have disappeared over many, many moves. I just got a couple, of her father and mother, with one of my sisters and a cousin who are the same age. I'm going to scan them in and fix them in Photoshop, then send them off to Snapfish to have copies made for my sibs. It will be the only picture I have of my grandfather, who died when I was nine, just about four years after this picture was taken.

I've done scrapbook pages for my mother, and shadow boxes for her and Daddy (his was about his Army career). Those went over well. I made a scrapbook for Mama to put the cards she receives each year. I have paper and stuff from when I was able to buy it, and it's just sitting there, waiting to be used.

I'm thinking about making each sibling a personalized ornament this year. I got large plastic ornaments from the Dollar Tree, and I've put my son's graduation tassels in them. I need to cut vinyl with the school name and theirs to put on them (I have a Cricut machine, which is an electronic die cutter and a program to make things to be cut out).

I need to finish making a reborn baby doll for Mama. A sister bought the kit, and I've been doing the work on it. Not much left to do, but I've gotten distracted and it's been taking me a while to get things done on it. First one and likely only one I'll ever do (unless she talks me into another one )

are so much nicer too
not just cheaper

Personalized ornaments sound really cool and it's the kinda stuff that creates family traditions.

Snapfish << hadn't heard of, great idea
i don't do scrapbooking but for artsy skilled people that's another great idea

I don't know how economical they would be, but I like making things from scratch. We don't eat fancy things, roast turkey is a big enough thrill for us twice a year.

I do my own dressing, using a good whole wheat bread, dried cranberries and golden raisins and walnuts and a few other basic things. It's something I adapted from a cookbook I've had for years. And I make cranberry sauce using whole berries. It's easy, and hardly any more effort than opening a can and trying to get the contents out. Tastes great, too.

Other than that, we roast a turkey, make mashed potatoes, green beans (not a casserole, just beans), usually mac n cheese, deviled eggs and brown and serve rolls (though I may use a recipe I have this year, but I love those rolls!). I use the jar gravy from Aldi, because it tastes so good.

For dessert, I'll make a couple of pies (love pie), maybe a low-carb cheesecake.

Pretty simple, and the leftovers will feed us for days. I do all the cooking, but my middle son does the carving. He gets it all, and then I store what we don't eat that day. Which reminds me, I need to get some of those foil pans with lids from the dollar store.

i for one would be interested

ooh Deviled eggs aka "the way to use up 'old eggs' and never have left overs" (after a hurricane (in FLA)) we lost power
had just bought 2 full sheets (50 eggs) for the family and i spent 2 hours boiling eggs over an open fire and making deviled eggs

5 people family, 5 hours later there were no more deviled eggs


for Holidays if i do a large celebration i often do potluck and 'everything goes doggy bag' (as posted above)
Everyone brings something, and at the end of the day everyone takes the left overs home (not their own but a mix)

or me and the people will just set up a 'ticket price'
i'll do the work for free but the ingredients cost
and then people can trade 'work' or 'ingredients' towards the ticket price

it's not really that hard to set up and it makes it fair, some people complain, usually ones that have never been short on money

i prefer the potluck though cause one gets to taste other recipes (and potentially steal them..the recipes)

both receiving and giving, the 3 most important things you can put into a gift are

time, you cannot get time back, you gave that up for the gift
love, you give love when you give something you spend your love making as nice as you can
thought, you give thought when you thought about the person you give to and matched the gift to them

thus i present
ebooks
i make ebooks from webpages, from scratch and so forth
and match them up

oh, you like pancakes? (my former sis in law)
gave her an ebook with 700 or so different international and US pancake / crepe / and combination recipes (she has the only copy too, i deleted it after)
she loved it, still does 2 years later