Summer Passions - Canning Season Part 1

One of my favorite things about the summertime is being able to cook with and preserve fresh and local ingredients!  Last year, we did a CSA for the first time and loved it!  (Click here for more information about our CSA, or CSA's in general.)  We chose to do a CSA instead of a big garden for the past few years because having a toddler means giving up some of your hobbies - and gardening is one that takes a lot of time and energy so I cut back in the garden quite a bit.

This year, I have carrots, radishes, potatoes, and beets going in my garden, and most of them are still growing so we will see how they turn out. Along with our own garden veggies, we have been going out to pick your own orchards, getting produce from friends, and ordering extra from our CSA in order to gather the supplies for LOTS of delicious canned goods!  

This season so far I have made the following:

 - Strawberry Freezer Jam
 - Rhubarb Conserve (Conserve is like preserves, but with citrus and nuts)
 - Pickled Radishes (various types, from our garden)
 - Green Tomato Chutney
 - Bread and Butter Pickles
 - Gingery Pickled Beets

Here is some eye candy of all of those lovelies:

Rhubarb Conserve

Bread and Butter Pickles

Strawberry Freezer Jam

Pickled Radishes

Green Tomato Chutney

Pickled Beets

We use our canned goods as gifts, and to eat throughout the winter, fall and spring!  There's something so wonderful about opening a jar of something that you have made yourself - its one of my favorite things!  Plus with our diabetic daughter, it really allows me to control how much sugar goes into what we are feeding her!

Hopefully, early next week we are going blueberry picking, and I'm definitely making more (dill) pickles as well as some jalapeno pepper jelly in the next week or two!

Do you do any home preserving?  If so, what is your favorite thing that you make?  Or what is your favorite home preserved snack that you've ever had? I definitely love a good pepper jelly with cream cheese and crackers - or some fresh dill pickles on a roast beef sandwich!  =)

Wee Memories Challenge and some other crafty goodness!

Hello crafty friends!  Happy Friday!  I'm really enjoying being able to share projects with you again, now that life has calmed down a bit!  First of all, I wanted to share with you all that I was the lucky LUCKY winner of Kim Wilson's Relay for Life prize pack over on her blog -- which included 8 or 9 stamp sets, adhesives, distress ink, pens, and even more goodies!  I got the package in the mail not too long ago, and so I wanted to get inky right away!

One of the reasons I was doubly pumped about this prize pack (as if there weren't enough reasons above), is that all of the stamp sets I won were from stamp companies whose stamps I don't own!  I'm always looking for new stamp companies, but it's hard to invest in too many!  I was most pumped to finally get my hands on some Wilson Design stamps - namely the Everything's OwlRight set!  I used it lots in today's card:

I am super proud of this card!  I really enjoyed blending my Wilson Designs and Lawn Fawn stamp sets!  Although the design is CAS, I did a lot of work on this card to make it fab!  The background is hand-stamped, the polaroid was masked off and the party hat was paper-pieced, AND that little yellow flower was also made by ME!  =)  It's a homemade resin flower!!!  Anyhow, I'm really happy with how the whole thing turned out!

I kept this card CAS because I was inspired by the current Wee Memories Challenge:

 

I have one more crafty project to share with you today!  I was over on Pinterest (if you haven't gone there yet, do it NOW!) and I saw this awesome yarn wreath with handmade felt dahlia's on it.  I followed the picture to THIS AMAZING BLOG!  I modified some things for my own wreath, mainly using three dahlias, not including the argyle pattern and wrapping the wreath with ribbon instead of yarn.  Here's how it turned out: 

I ended up really liking the result!  It looks just great on our front door!  =)  It was time-consuming, but totally worth it for the final result!  =)

Well, that's all I have to share for now, but I do have more fun things to share with you SOON!  Stay tuned, and have a fantastic weekend!  =)