Flash Freezing Blueberries

What a great time to live in Big Valley.  The Amish are selling blueberries, and I always like to get them, wash and dry them, and then flash freeze them for future use.  We got these at Peachey’s Mountain Blueberries.  They had quart containers for $5 each.  We bought 4 quarts and it filled my colander to the top!  The Amish had cleaned these really well of any stems, I only found 3 stems and only had 3 mushed berries.  Here is just one tray (I had 3 trays) of the blueberries for flash freezing:

  Aren’t they beautiful?  After I flash freeze them for about 1 or 2 hours, I will bag them for storage in the freezer.  Putting them in a single layer once they are dry and flash freezing them, prevents them from sticking together in the bag.  So much better than store bought berries and so, so delicious!

Homemade Despicable Me Minion Pillow

Homemade Despicable Me Minion

Our church’s teen group has a white elephant gift party for Christmas every year.  As you may know the white elephant gift must be made from things that cost no or very little money. 

 We had the yellow felt, the blue fleece, white interface and the buttons, but nothing black.  We went off to the thrift store and found a 50 cent blanket made of black fleece.   We also had two stuffed pillows that were losing their stuffing, so we used that to stuff the little guy.

My son really likes animation, so I thought a minion pillow would be perfect to give as a gift.  My son had the vision to make it the shape of the minion, I was just going to make a small minion and put it on the pillow.  We worked together looking at pictures of the minion and determining how it would be put together and then I used my sewing machine to put the minion  together.  We then stuffed him and put the legs on last.

My son was thrilled with the result and it only cost me about 5 hours and 50 cents.  We stuffed the minion in a bucket and wrapped him for the party.  I hope the new owner enjoys him as much as we did.