Weekend Happenings and a Recipe

This weekend was fabulous and restful. But not long enough. Obviously. It's Monday morning and I'm feeling like it's Friday... not good.

I had a crazy day Friday, 11.11.11.

Saturday, I woke up late, did homework, stood in line for 45 minutes at the post office to mail some orders, scored some great deals at the craft store, and went to our friends' annual cheese party. You heard me right. Each year for his birthday, our friend has a cheese party where everyone brings a cheese dish. It's amazing how versatile cheese is!

{photos taken on my iphone}

I was daring and did a red lip for church.

Painted my nails taupe with moody plum french tips. The topcoat kind of made the colors run together. I kind of liked the effect so I decided not to clean them up.

Another jewel fell off my shoes :( So I re-purposed them! More on this and a tutorial later. 

We had a lot of grapes in our fridge, so we made homemade grape juice! No sugar, just grapes and water. Sooo good.

You can use any grapes you want. We had a mixture of red grapes and dark Concord grapes, so we just threw them both in. I had a request for the recipe, so here it is:

Homemade Grape Juice

1. Take the stems off your grapes, and wash them in a colander.

2. Put them in a large bowl and squish with a potato masher. If your grapes have seeds, be careful because crushing the seeds will release bitterness. Seth wanted to squish the grapes with his feet... I guess you can do 

that too if you desire...

3. After your grapes are nice and mashed, and some juice has been released, put it all in a large pot on the stove. Simmer for 10 minutes, and re-mash half way through. Cooking the grapes will release the natural sugars and nice purple color. (Or gold if you are making white grape juice. mmm...)

4. Once the juice has been cooked, strain it all through cheesecloth or a very fine mesh into a large bowl. A lot of juice will be stuck in the grapes on top, so mix them around to release more juice. Then put that in the fridge overnight so all the juice can seep out.

5. In the morning, get rid of the grapes. Restrain the juice through cheesecloth or mesh 1 to 3 more times, because some sediments will still have gotten through overnight. Once it is the consistency you want, pour it into a serving dish.

6. Finally, taste the juice. Ours was sweet on its own, but you may add more sugar if it needs it. Ours was also EXTREMELY thick. It was pure juice after all, so we added a bit of water until it tasted right.

7. TaDa! Your very own homemade grape juice. I would try to drink it quickly so it doesn't go bad. Remember, it's super fresh so no preservatives like store-bought.

*amber*