A couple of friends and I got together yesterday with some bottles of booze and had a great time. We sloshed a little vodka, rum, and bourbon into bottles with vanilla beans and made our own Vanilla Extract.

My hubby the auction freak (buys everything at an auction that is a good deal) had several small bottles that we used.

We cut the stem of the vanilla bean up the middle leaving the top together for easy removal, filled the 2 and 4 ounce jars and added one bean to the small jars and 2 beans to the bigger jars.

[caption id=“attachment_183” align=“alignleft” width=“320” caption=“Homemade Vanilla Extract - Day 1”][/caption]

The house was alive with the smell of Vanilla.  It reminded me of baking sugar cookies and made me want to bake a  batch.

Viki and Denise would do the filling of the bottles and poke the stem of the vanilla into the jar.

We had  a lot of smiles, a bit of the spirits leftover and lots of Holiday unique gift prepared.

[caption id=“attachment_184” align=“alignleft” width=“320” caption=“Mmmm Good.”][/caption]