we be jammin'

After many hours in a hot field, many more hours in a hot kitchen, and maybe one more hour in a reasonably cool dining room I have adorable jars of jam that are perfect for giving as gifts or hoarding for oneself.  Which is what I'm doing so far. 

I scoured blogland for cute canning paraphernalia and ended up using labels from eat drink chic.  (There are loads of others - check out the tags and labels from domestifluff, labels from A Sonoma Garden, and more labels from merriment design.)  

I printed the labels on sticker paper to make it easy on myself.

The red checkered fabric was in my stash so I simply used my pinking shears to cut squares for each jar. 

The 'homemade with love' tags were adorable but I didn't end up using them on the jars.  I have to admit that I changed my mind about them because I didn't have the right kind of string for tying them around the jars and I didn't want to go to the store and buy some.  'The jars look so cute already,' I told myself and then I whipped out my camera and started snapping away.

Next on the agenda: raspberry and blueberry jam.  How about you?  Have you ever canned anything?  Any suggestions?

sticky red fingers

We began the night with two gigantic bowls of strawberries and several stalks of rhubarb.

I was the designated knife wielder and therefore spent most of the night hunched at the table feverishly slicing stems off the strawberries and cutting the rhubarb into more reasonable lengths.

Meghan was in charge of endless stirring and scooping.  My Auntie Mame directed us all night since she's the jam expert.  I think it's safe to say that we all enjoyed a very successful but looong night of canning.  Several hours and varying degrees of arm ache later we had churned out jars and jars of strawberry and strawberry rhubarb jam.  Tune in tomorrow for the finished product!