Simple Homemade Christmas Gifts | Jam, Tallow Candles & Candied Oranges

Welcome back to the cottage. Today we are putting together our homemade Christmas baskets filled with simple handmade things to give to our friends, families, and neighbors. Christmas doesn't have to come with a price tag. Sometimes the most meaningful gifts are the ones made slowly with what we already have right in our kitchen. Today we're starting off with our Christmas jam. It is a deep ruby red jam made with cranberries and strawberries. I actually added raspberries as well. It was fruit tucked away from summer that needed to be used up before winter really settles in. There is a bit of orange, some warm cinnamon, and cloves. It tastes like Christmas in a jar. I will have the full recipe linked in the description, but the best part really is just slowing down and letting the seasons show up in your kitchen. I water bath canned the jam so it is shelf stable and ready to gift. And if you're new to canning, jam is one of the easiest places to start. I am using my Presto digital canner here. It can do both pressure canning and water bath canning and of course I will link that in my canning favorites below as well. Next we are moving on to our tallow and beeswax candles. I didn't follow a strict recipe for these but I had read that when you're making candles with tallow, adding about 25% beeswax to 75% helps them burn better a little bit more slow and even. So that's what I did here. I measured everything out, melted it together in our double broiler. For scent, I used what I already had on hand, a few essential oils, and some candle fragrance I had left over from making candles from our firm stand over the summer. If you don't already have candle making supplies, you can easily find smaller quantities online without having to order from big retailers. The tallow I'm using here is something that we source locally which makes it feel a little bit more special. And the jars I used are thrifted cups, ramekins, and little jars I have picked up over the last few weeks. Most of these were right around 25 cents each which makes this such an affordable gift and one that smells absolutely amazing. While the candles were curing, I moved on to making candied oranges. This was actually my first time making them and I'll be honest, they looked beautiful, but I wasn't sure how they would taste, especially since you eat the rind and all. If you've ever wondered the same thing, I can tell you that once they were finished, I was completely blown away by the flavor. You start by slicing your oranges nice and thin. Try to keep them as even as possible. Then you blanch them in boiling water for about This is a step you don't want to skip. It helps remove all that bitterness from the peel. Next, make a simple syrup using equal parts sugar and water. Add the oranges and bring them to a very gentle simmer for about 45 minutes. You'll want to work in batches so the pan isn't overcrowded. Once they are done, lay them out on a rack or in a dehydrator and let them dry overnight. If you're using a dehydrator, keep it on the lowest setting. When they're mostly dry, but still just a bit tacky, dip them in sugar. An optional step, but I highly recommend, is dipping them into a bit of milk chocolate or dark chocolate, whichever you prefer, and then finishing them with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. They are absolutely incredible. Once they were completely dry, I packaged them in a craft food safe bag and I'll have everything I use linked below. All right, I am going to start dividing up and packaging the oranges and I just thought I would chat a little bit as we go into the holiday season, um, just about things that are happening around here. We are obviously, oops, there was a lot of sugar on that one. We are obviously a channel, but we have been creating for quite a long time and I'm finally finding my footing in this arena and I have really enjoyed sharing a little bit about our life here on our homestead, building our little country cottage, um, and sharing it with you guys. If you are new to us, thank you so, so much for spending your time here with us. Oh, that has a lot of chocolate on it. Um, I'm still learning all of the editing process and how I want the videos to look like and share. Um, but I appreciate your patience. As I learned with this learning curve, filming with a new camera, we are, if you don't follow us anywhere, we moved. What are you doing? We have a cat. Um, we moved into this home in April. We are bootstrapping our way to make it our homestead. We have always dreamt of having a homestead before we really knew the term homesteading. Um, we knew we wanted to have what we thought was a small farm, but, um, that dream started out 20 years ago when we were young teen parents with, um, a lot of learning and growing up to do. And, um, it took us a long time to get there. 20 years. We rented for a very long time. We were finally able to, um, buy our first home back in 2017, 2016, 2017. And, um, then we were finally able to sell that home last April and move here. Um, there were a lots of years of living paycheck to paycheck. There were lots of years, barely even being able to do that. So having to be able to buy this very modest piece of land, it's only six acres. Our little cottage that I refer to is actually a manufactured home made in a factory back in 2004. And we're just slowly making it our own. Um, but it is our dream come true. The land is so beautiful. Um, we have been sharing lots of like garden and flower videos through this last summer on our Tik TOK and our Instagram. If you want to head over there and scroll back a little bit, we grow flowers for fun and for profit. We have a little flower stand that we stack at the end of our driveway, um, July through September, October, depending on the season. Um, and we have chickens, we have ducks, we will be hopefully doing pigs in the spring. Um, we'll be doing meat chickens. Um, so we share a little bit of everything. We share a little bit about our journey here. Um, the struggles that took to building this place, um, the journey that it took to get here, but we also just share this type of content, slow living, um, which is a term that is relatively popular nowadays, but I also feel like it is just a misunderstood. So living to me is, um, actually a lot harder because you don't take the convenience side of things. You make things from scratch and you do things kind of like the old fashioned way. And it takes time, but I find it very rewarding. Um, we share that's turning this manufactured home into our little country cottage. We share decorating and little tutorials like this. Basically we just share our life. Uh, we're average people. We live in Michigan. Um, we try to live with the seasons. We try to just bring a little bit of beauty and happiness to a very, sometimes very dark, bleak world. And we just want to share that with you. We just want to share how we live because we're inspired to live like this. And we hope to inspire other people that it's quite attainable. There's a world full of influencers that are, you know, doing their Sephora halls, which there's nothing wrong with that, but a lot of everyday people can't afford to live like a lot of these influencers who make a lot of content. So my goal when I'm making content is that it is relaxing, it's peaceful, it's inspiring, but it's also attainable because for a long, long time, I watched these people thinking I could never do that. How do you, how do they have the money to just do that? Um, but yeah, so that's a little story about, um, what we will plan on sharing here. This one's a really large one too. Um, I think that is five and I think we have five baskets. I might have to make more because these are so good and this is all we have left for my family. Though my family has not tried it yet. I think they're a little worried to try it because it doesn't seem normal to eat something with the rind, right? Um, and I didn't know if I would like these either. This is the first time I've ever actually made candied oranges and I love them, especially the chocolate ones. I didn't think orange and chocolate went together. Try it though. Make a small batch for yourself and try it. It is so good. I love it. All right, let's get started putting these baskets. Thank you so much for being here and for spending a little bit of your holiday season with us. It truly means more than I can say that you chose to slow down and share time together. If you enjoyed this video, I'd love for you to subscribe. Join us here as we continue our journey through the seasons and please let me know if you try any of these items. From our home to yours, I hope you have the happiest holidays.