Apple Harvest Time!

Hey there! Just wanted to give you a peek at what I've been doing aaaalllllll weekend! Last year my hubby mentioned that he thought our apple tree would actually produce some fruit. Last year we got 6 or 7 small apples. This is what we got this year.... :)

LOL, not to mention, my in-laws gave us about 3 lb. of apples from THEIR tree, so we had another bowl than the 4 pictured! I'm no gardener, so this fascinates me, and it's pretty cool that they are actually good apples! A few years ago, I made apple butter in the Crock Pot, and it turned out really good... so that's where I started with this ginormous pile o' apples. So far I have 36 of these little 4 oz. jars. (More on the cute jar labels to come!) Plus I made 24 apple oatmeal muffins (sadly didn't turn out so great... they *might* get eaten, we will see) and a very yummy apple cake (found it on Pinterest!) that *did* turn out good and it was SO easy! The only thing was at our altitude and dry climate made it so I needed to add a LOT of water to it, probably about a cup and a half of water, but so good and easy! I have a delicious apple cake recipe from my hubby's grandma, but it's from-scratch and super time consuming, so I'm glad to have this easy alternative! Anyhoo... after all that made, I still have 3 of these big bowls of apples! LOL, I am learning more about canning this year than I have ever known before. I think I might attempt jelly next. Clearly I have enough fruit that if it doesn't turn out well, it won't be a big problem! ;)

Well of course I had fun with the baking/making food, but even MORE fun with making the jars cute. :) Everything I used on these is a dust-off, old products that still work great! :) The apple stamp is Unity, the punches are EK Success, the letter/number stamps are this magnetic stamp set I've had forever and will probably never part with. You arrange the magnetic stamps on the metal block to say what you want. Old OLD Making Memories, I just love them! :)

Those mini tags are truly ancient, but I didn't have enough. So I dove into my little box of parts and pieces, was able to cut apart several die-cuts that were leftover to make tags. Also I found some old SU! canvas pieces that worked great!

The "From The Kitchen Of" labels were from one of my Spotted Canary prize packs, they are Martha Stewart Crafts. I didn't know if I'd ever get around to using them, loved to find a purpose! There's only 12, but that's ok. :)

The apple was inked up with multiple markers, then punched out and finally the words stamped over the top. I punched a larger green circle and added a heart brad to the apple stem. Used some of my huge spool of bakers twine to tie on the tags with the date.

And that's all for today. Tomorrow I am dropping my son off at his first day of middle school, and to be honest it's been a hard week for me. These darn kids grow up too fast! *sniff sniff* It was good to have something to occupy my mind with besides him growing up! Besides all this apple yumminess makes me happy that Fall is on it's way!

have a great day:) xo,
Noelle