Busy Bag Storage: Gallon Ziplocks

When I started putting busy bags together the first ones I did were the felt board pieces.  With so many little pieces I needed a storage solution right away.  Looking around the house at what I had and wanting some uniformity in storing the various activities I decided to use gallon ziplock bags and a Homz plastic hanging folder tub that I have had for 6+ years.

Mozzarella from a Gallon of Milk

WOW!  This was so fun to make and absolutely delicious to consume.  A couple weeks ago I came across this pin on Pinterest which took me to Simple Bites post about The Best Party Trick Ever: How to Make Thirty Minute Mozzarella.  I'd like to share some notes about our first two attempts to make this.

#1.  Our first attempt turned out a little tough and dry.  We used 2% milk, and think that it was heated and handled too much.  It was possible to shape it into a nice log to cut.  Sorry no pictures, I was having a rough day.

#2.  The next day our mozzarella turned out amazing, it was nice and soft and gooey.  This time we used whole milk, and heated and handled it much less.  This time it was hard to get it to shape into a log, but if we let it cool a little it probably would have been possible.

I'm working on editing the video so it's not 30 minutes long.  There are some really cool points in the video that you can really see stuff happening.

Finished Caprese Salad.

Even my 2 year old ate the cheese!

My hubby did some research on what to do with the "leftover" whey after our first attempt because he didn't want it to go to waste.  He found The Prairie Homestead's post "16 Ways to Use Your Whey" decided that he would try to make ricotta (using this recipe from Fias Co Farm/Dairy) with the second batch.  While we didn't do anything with the ricotta it turned out well, although it needed some salt and a lot of the cheese got stuck in the cheese cloth.

Ricotta Cheese.

We got about a pound of mozzarella each time even with the changes, and between a quarter and a third of a cup of ricotta was produced from the resulting whey. 

Graduation!

We attended a couple graduation parties last month.  One was for a cousin of mine and the other was for a neighbor.  I looked through my card pins on pinterest and thought I would do a patchwork card (like this one from The Paper Stamper or this one from Stuck on Stampin') for each of them, but when I sat down to craft I didn't find enough patterns that I liked in the schools' colors.

Sitting on my tables were three sets of felt flowers from Three Bugs in a Rug (The Back Porch, Luke & Lola, and Chalk Garden) that I got at the LSS Trash & Treasure sale.  Since I had just looked through my pins I had this one in mind from all things paper.  I don't think I've ever used stitching on a card before, even though I've had my Sew Easy for quite a while now.  The stitching was all done with the Sew Easy straight stitch (I added an extra hole between each standard hole) and white thread.  Everything I used was in my stash.

I really like how these turned out.