I’ve been thinking a lot about my sister lately.

My younger sibling, whom I adore (despite early indications to the contrary) loves coffee almost as much as I dislike it.

This week, with my sibling on my mind, I decided to do a little experimenting with our family’s favorite banana bread recipe. I gave our traditional loaf a younger, hipper, more interesting sister.

The recipe calls for lots of chocolate, a bit of coffee and a dash of cayenne pepper. I call it Hot Mocha Banana Bread, but I could have called it, I’m Going To Miss That Kid This Christmas Bread.

Usually this time of year, we are quintupling our banana bread recipe to give out mini loaves for the holidays. This year, half of those loaves will have a few secret ingredients, including a bit of one of these, which my mom often leaves at our house after a visit.

See how much I dislike coffee? My poor mother has to bring her own. No wonder she ‘s always liked my sister better …

Traditional Banana Bread

1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 /2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup evaporated cane juice

1 egg

1/4 cup applesauce

1/4 cup extra light olive oil

the scrapings of one vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients until combined. In a separate bowl, blend bananas, sugars, egg, applesauce, vanilla bean and oil. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.

Bake in a well-oiled pan for 55 minutes to one hour, or in a cupcake tin for about 22 minutes.

Hot Mocha Banana Bread

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 /2 tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 tsp instant coffee

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup evaporated cane juice

1 egg

1/4 cup applesauce

1/4 cup extra light olive oil

the scrapings of one vanilla bean (or 1 tsp vanilla extract)

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients until combined. In a separate bowl, blend bananas, sugars, egg, applesauce, vanilla bean and oil. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Bake in a well-oiled pan for 55 minutes to one hour, or in a cupcake tin for about 22 minutes.

Merry Christmas to my Nashville family. Love you guys!!

I know what you are thinking. That is some headline.

But I had to choose something that showed my excitement at discovering the BEST recipe ever for colorful and festive natural decorating icing.

Until now, I have been at a loss when it comes to cool icing for holiday cookies. The only products out there have trans fat or artificial colors … it’s an organic nightmare.

But recently, I tried the simplest recipe ever — just three ingredients. Ready?

• Organic confectioner’s sugar
• Organic cream
• Natural food coloring (this product always seemed a little pricey to me, but you need such small amounts, that it lasts a long time. Also, the colors are MUCH more vibrant that other natural food colorings I have used!)

And guess what?! We have bright green trees, pink snowmen, and all sorts of other fun cookies. The icing tastes great and “dries,” so the cookies can be stored and shared.

I start with two cups of sugar and add a few tablespoons of cream. I keep adding cream until it gets thin enough that all the sugar is incorporated, and it is easily spreadable. I then separate small amounts into small bowls and add coloring according to package directions to make lots of beautiful colors!

Happy Decorating!!

Around here, we give a lot of handmade gifts.

This helps us to stay within our budget, but it also feels really good to give something homemade to people that we care about.

This year, we are making potholders and vanilla extract.

But here are a few other ideas for handmade holiday gifts that show a little love:

• Shimmery Peppermint Lip Balm
• Wool Baby/Toddler Pants
• Felted Ornaments
• Aromatherapy Pillow Spray
• Cranberry Hazelnutty Granola
• Cinnamon Roasted Nuts
• Homemade Deodorant (nothin’ personal, Uncle Mike!)
• Herbal Kitchen Spray
• Homemade Laundry Soap
• Lavender-Peppermint Bath Salts
• Pancake Mix
• Lemony Sugar Scrub
• Birdseed Ornaments
• Homemade Dog Treats
• Vanilla Sugar

What are you making this year?

Every year, I look for ideas for small things to make for friends and family.

We give a lot of homemade gifts, and I really enjoy having something small and handmade to give to people who have made our year better — friends from the library, co-workers, neighbors.

A few years ago, I heard about making vanilla extract. But I could never seem to start it early enough. Homemade vanilla extract takes about 2 months to steep, which means that ideally, to be a Christmas gift, it should be started around Halloween.

And I am just not thinking about Christmas at Halloween.

But this year, a friend gave me a great idea — make the extract now, transfer it to small glass bottles and label it: “Do not use until Feb. 1, 2012.”

Easy-peasy, right? This year is finally the year!

In researching this process, I have learned that homemade vanilla extract basically has two ingredients: vanilla beans and alcohol. The alcohol is most commonly vodka, though I have found recipes that use rum. Apparently, the cheap stuff works fine. I used some more expensive vodka because it has been sitting in my freezer for two years looking for a home. I also bought some super cheap stuff, so I could make a lot of vanilla.

The process is simple: Split 6 vanilla beans lengthwise, put them in a mason jar, and add 2 cups of vodka. Shake, and leave it alone. Putting it in a dark place is probably a good idea. Closer to Christmas, transfer it to small bottles.

A nice bonus of making your own vanilla is that many commercial brands contain corn syrup, so this is one way to avoid the stuff. Plus, the rumor is that you can continue making vanilla from the same beans several times by adding new liquor to a little bit of vanilla extract left in the bottom of your bottle. (I’ll give it a shot in a few months and let you know.)

My vanilla has only been steeping for a few days (it darkens a little each day), and already, it smells wonderful. I can’t wait to package it up and share it with the bakers in my life, and so many people who have made this year a little sweeter.

A couple of years ago, we started making lip balm for Christmas. I loved making little pots of natural lip balm to give to friends. It was the perfect small gift to say “thanks for being there this year.”

But the problem with finding the perfect small gift to give people, is that sometimes it gets kind of boring. The tradition of lip balm is nice, but there’s not a whole lot of surprise if you do it every year.

So this year we decided to mix things up a bit and make peppermint version rather than our usual Put-the-Lime-in-the-Coconut version (using coconut oil and lime essential oil).

And, I had a wacky idea – I saw on Honeybee Gardens’ web site that theirstackable mineral colors can be used as eyeliner and even in nail polish. I wondered … would it work to add a little to the lip balm? I tried Flirtatious, which is a super light pink with a little bit of shimmer, and Shimmery Pepperminty Lip Balm was born! Not boring at all! 

The new recipe turned out great, and smells just like Christmastime. It always feels wintery to me when I have some peppermint lip balm in my coat pocket.

Peppermint Lip Balm

This recipe makes 12 1/2 ounce containers, but can be halved or even quartered. I think you will want at least three (one to keep and two to share!).

8 tbsp sweet almond oil

4 tbsp grated beeswax

4 tbsp shea butter

2 tsp vitamin E (acts as a natural preservative)

24 drops of peppermint essential oil

2 small pinches of Honeybee Gardens’ Flirtatious Stackable Mineral Color

I melted the ingredients (except the peppermint oil and mineral color) in a liquid measuring cup inside a pan on the stove over medium heat. When the solid oils had melted and everything looked like liquid, I took the mixture off the stove, added the peppermint oil and mixed in the color. Then I quickly poured the mix into small containers and whirled them around a bit so the color would distribute evenly.

This makes a great-smelling, shimmery lip balm, that isn’t greasy or sticky. It would be great in tubes too!

Happy Making!

I bet you have figured out the other thing we made from recycled wool sweaters this week …

They are these super cute, comfy and warm pants for my little nephew, and because his mom and dad use cloth diapers, these pants double as a diaper cover or soaker.

Just like yesterday’s wool sweater upcycling projects, this project began with a thrifted sweater from Goodwill. It was a men’s large, 100 percent wool, and I snatched it off the rack away from a lady who looked like she was doing on a case study on Bill Cosby.

I knew I wanted to create a pair of baby pants, so I looked for a sweater that was at least 90 percent wool, because wool is some fantastic stuff when you are talking babies.

I could go on and on about all the wonderful properties of sheep fur, but Diaper Pin covers it really well. In short, wool keeps babies warm and dry wile letting their skin breathe. Lovely.

In order to make these pants, I used a pair of pants my children wore when they were slightly older than my nephew is now. Why? For a couple of reasons:

1. Cloth diaper butt. Most baby clothes are just not made for cloth diapers, so you want to allow a little extra room back there.
2. I always error on the side of big. Nothing stinks worse than making something by hand only to have it already be outgrown when the gift is given.
3. I am not an expert seamstress at all. And normally, if I were making a pair of pants to be the same size as the ones I used for tracing, I would have to factor in seam allowances. Although this doesn’t seem like a big deal to just trace a little to the outside of the actual pants, using pants on size larger means I can just follow the general edge of the pants and get a pretty good result. Important note: But, unlike the pair of pants I traced, the wool pants require you to create a waistband, so it is important to allow for an extra large seam allowance at the top of about an inch and a half to two inches no matter what. Make sense?
4. The true baby clothes are at the waaaaay back of the basement.

So what follows is a brief tutorial on how to make your own wool soaker/wool pants using a recycled wool sweater.

I will just add that they are super fun, sew up quickly by hand, don’t require a lot of tools or any knowledge of fancy sewing skills, are way cheaper than a store-bought version, are super warm, utilize found materials and turn out really, really cute.

Ready?

Step 1: Get yourself some tools. You need a clean, dry sweater (at least 90 percent wool), a pair of good scissors, a tapestry or other big needle and sock yarn. Worsted weight yarn works too, but sock yarn is great if you have some.

Important note: You don’t want to work with fraying fabric, so it may be necessary to felt your sweater just the teeniest bit by running it one time through the wash on hot with a tiny bit of soap. You can test whether your sweater is going to fray by cutting off a cuff and seeing what happens. Felt it once and test the other cuff. You’ll probably be good to go!

Step 2: Fold your pants in half and line the bottoms up with the bottom of the sweater. That way, you can use the finished edge as the bottom of your pants … sometimes there are nice patterns down there. Cut around the pants, remembering to leave extra fabric at the top where you will make your waistband.

Step 3: Flip the pants over to the other side, line them up the same way and cut.

Now you have four pieces of fabric that look like this.

Step 4: Begin by stitching up the outside seams of both pant legs (right sides facing here).

Next, with right sides facing again, match the crotch section and stitch together to where the pants separate, like this:

Step 5: Sew up each individual pant-leg from the crotch down (you may want to narrow out the ankles a bit, especially if the pants you are tracing are sort of on the baggier side.)

Another note: It probably makes the most sense to trace pants that have a fit similar to how you want the wool pants to fit, but as I said, a lot of my true baby pants are in deep storage so I used these jeans.

When you are done, flip the pants right-side-out and check the crotch for holes. I like to go back and reinforce it a bit to keep the pants from splitting or causing leaks.

Step 6: With the pants inside-out again, create a waistband by folding the fabric under 1/4 inch, then under again about 1 inch. Sew into place.

Step 7: Flip the pants right side out and sew a few stitches at the top and bottom of the waistband, above and below the stitches you used to create the waistband. Then, carefully use scissors to cut the waistband stitch between your two new stitches.

Using a threaded yarn needle, and the opening you just created, thread the needle through the waistband to create a “belt.” Tie two yarn ends into a bow at the front.

Hooray! Pants!!

P.S. Again, I have to apologize for the blurriness of some of these photos. I was having some camera issues which are now all better! Yippee! Perhaps someday soon I will make another pair of pants and get some clearer photos. But not until after the holidays. You understand, right?

Last week, I posted about finding some wool sweaters at our local Goodwill and asked if you could guess what we were going to make from them.

We got a lot of good guesses, and many ideas I plan to look into because as you will see over the next two days, we get a little nuts over upcycling wool sweaters here.

So today I’d like to bring you Part One of what we did with sweaters. Remember this stripey number from last week? Owen found it in the women’s section. It cost $3.

Our first step for this one was to machine felt it. Never machine felted anything on purpose? Don’t worry — it is easy. In fact, its so easy, you may have done it once or twice accidentally.

Machine felting occurs when you wash a wool item on hot and as it agitates in there with the soap, the fibers bind together and the fabric becomes tighter and a little more stiff. This means the stitches will not unravel if the fabric is cut.

It will also shrink the heck out of your sweater or whatnot.

This is GREAT when you want to felt something. It is not so nice when your wool sock snuck in with some other wash and now will fit your infant.

This sweater was a woman’s medium when we bought it. We washed it five times total, alone each time, and with just a tiny bit of soap. When the fabric felt stiff and had lost its stretch, we dried it and when it came out, the body was about the size of my 3-year-old. The arms were still too long for her arms, but more on that below.

Our first project was to cut bits of the sweater into shapes and thread them with string to make ornaments. We did the cutting free-hand, but you could certainly draw or print out the shape you are going for, pin it to the fabric and cut around the shape.

We used a tapestry needle and yarn to create a string. Voila. Homemade ornaments!

After we made enough ornaments to share (and a few to keep), we had to figure out what else to do with this sweater.

So first we used those long sleeves to make some leg warmers, which are the perfect thing for a little girls who loves to wear dresses and tights even in the winter.

You can also make nice arm warmers, just measure on your arm (or your child’s arm, since the sweater is a lot smaller than it used to be!) and cut a very small hole for each thumb.

Next, we made some headbands out of the cowl. Not all sweaters will have cowls, of course, but this one did and it made three fancy felted headbands of various sizes.

This is the thing with felting … it is not an exact science. So sometimes, I find myself making things and then later finding someone that is the size of the made thing. It all works out. You just have to be a little Zen about it.

Tomorrow, I want to share another wool upcycling project with you. I am super excited about that one as well!

One final felting tip — don’t toss those little bits of felt that you cut off as you are making ornaments and such. Let your kids string them on a long piece of yarn using a blunt needle. They make beautiful natural garland!!

Happy Making!

By the way: My camera got dropped over the weekend and I am having some issues with it, so I apologize for the quality of some of these photos. Hopefully it will be a quick fix!

For some reason, when I was a kid, we always had two things around at the holidays: a fruit basket and a nut bowl.

The fruit basket came from family from far away. My guess now would be California or Florida based on all the citrus, but it could have been anywhere really. I don’t remember who sent it, I just remember it would be there waiting one Friday night when we showed up at my grandparents’ house, stacked tall like Carmen Miranda’s hat, and my sister and I would sit and eat fruit until we were sticky.

The nuts just happened because my grandpa loved nuts, so my grandparents would buy a bowl when they became available in November, and we always knew every Christmas without fail we would have fruit and nuts.

I guess if you were fancy you could call is deconstructed fruitcake.

But we weren’t fancy. We were just kids who enjoyed the novelty of apples that weren’t Red Delicious.

Last year, I took my children to see a production of the Nutcracker. As Ellery watched ballerina’s leap across the stage, Owen turned to the nutcracker factor.

“So that guy is supposed to crack nuts?” he asked, pointing to a dark-haired teen-ager wearing a red vest and toe shoes.

“Well yes,” I told him. “He’s a nutcracker. But generally nutcrackers are small like the one in the beginning, not life-size and wearing see-through tights.”

Owen quickly became fascinated with colorful wooden nutcrackers that seemed to be everywhere. The fascination was the same thing that struck me as a kid, having not realized  before that point that nuts must come in something before they get into trail mix.

So this year I have decided to reinstate the family tradition of a fruit basket and nut bowl, although we had to buy the fruit ourselves. It just isn’t really in fashion anymore to send people a fruit basket. I blame the Internet.

The lovely side effect of this is that we are all eating more fruit that we were a few weeks ago. I think it is just having it there in front of you looking tempting and delicious, the same way that I will remember to drink 12 gallons of water if I just put a cucumber slice in it.

So maybe the fruit basket and the nut bowl will stay.

Or maybe they will just come back once a year to remind us of the simplest gifts of the season.

For right now, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

No, not a bounty of good will, even though sounds more like something people might say this time of year, but a Goodwill Bounty.

Today, the kids and I went thrifting to find some holiday cheer. And boy did we ever.

We were on the lookout for wool sweaters. Our plan was to buy one or two, and then head home for some baking and crafting. But wool sweaters are harder to come by than they used to be, even in the frigid Midwest.

I hope that’s because there are more and more people out there who like us, like to  recycle the sweaters.

Because our thrifting portion of this project took longer than expected,I can’t report on the results today.

Instead, I wanted to ask you – just what do you think our family is going to do with these sweaters?

There are a couple of clues in the text above. Take a guess and if you are right, win an extra entry into the free I’m Organic shopping bag giveaway– but hurry because the give-away winner will be randomly selected tomorrow and comments on this post will close at 6 p.m. (CST) tonight!!

Hint: We actually have plans to do two or three things with these sweaters, so you have a pretty good chance of being right!!! 

So add your guess below!!

Note: The contest is over, but still feel free to guess away until we share the projects next week!

A few months ago, I was struggling with insomnia. I would wake up at 4 o’clock every morning, drag myself out of bed, and hit the couch so as not to wake up everyone else in the house.

There I would read or knit until I was overtaken by sleep, only to wake up again at a decent hour to little people who would like “pancakes for breakfast please,” and I would try in a fog to remember what a pancake was and how to crack an egg.

I read then about aromatherapy for insomnia, and so I tried mixing up a little spray to use on my pillow as I settled in for the night. I’m not sure which I credit more for the nice dream-filled nights I am having now, the pillow spray, or the new bedtime routine that it started for me, but my sheets sure smell lovely either way.

It occurred to me that happy sleep and nice-smelling sheets are things many people would probably appreciate, so we’ve made up several bottles of aromatherapy pillow spray for friends and family.

It is so simple, and you can adapt it for other uses as well, like a regular old (chemical-free) air or fabric freshening ….

Basic Pillow Spray Recipe:

about 4 oz distilled water

15 -20 drops essential oils

Mix in a 4 oz. spray bottle

• Our Sweet Dreams version includes lavender, chamomile and hops essential oils.
• For a family member who is always struggling with sinus issues in the winter, we are making a lavender and eucalyptus mix. (Use just a few drops of eucalyptus oil as it is very strong).
• A very kid-friendly blend is lavender with a few drops or orange and ylang ylang (about 10-15 drops of essential oil total is good for kids; no more than one or two drops ylang ylang as it is very potent). This blend is proven to scare away anything hiding under a bed (except cats).

Remember to always dilute essential oils well, and to include directions on the bottle to shake well before spraying.

  Happy Making, and sweet dreams!

Don’t forget there is still time to sign up for the I’m Organic bag give-awayand use the 15 percent off coupon code SafelyOrganic when shopping for bags!