Place 2 cups of sugar into your lidded container of choice (I always use a mason jar).
Split one bean in half, scrape the seeds out and add the seeds and the outer bean to the sugar.
Put the lid on, shake, and let sit for two weeks.
Notes
Use any kind of sugar you'd like. Brown sugar (related: How to Make Brown Sugar) would likely have too strong of a flavor to make much of a difference in the taste.You can use spent beans from Homemade Vanilla Extract to extend their useful little vanilla lives, but you will want to make sure two things happen. One) have the beans dry out before adding them to the sugar and two) you'll want to double the number of vanilla beans since some of the vanilla essence has already been used up for the extract.