Busy Busy Busy Bee!

I'm learning how to can food this year. So far I have canned 7 small and 3 large jars of tomatoes and 2 large jars of pickles. I've also done the freezer bag method... I've got about 8 bags of frozen tomatoes, 6 bags of frozen beets and maybe another 8 bags of frozen beans. YUM!! And I still have another grocery bag full of tomatoes to can!
This is my first year doing this  so my recipes are very basic. so If you know of any great canning recipes send them my way...you can do so in the comment section below...I'd love to know what other's are canning!

I did not can that bottle of Amarula... If I knew how to do that...

I though canning would be more difficult but it's actually quite simple. I started off boiling my filled jars and then realized what the heck?! I have a pressure cooker! so I did a bunch in the pressure cooker which took a fraction of the time.
 Here's a funny situation that canning has gotten me into though: I decided that instead of canning in small jars, why don't I use the larger jars?  so I went out and bought a box of larger mason jars, cooked and peeled my tomatoes, and proceeded to place them into my pressure cooker... the jars were taller than my pressure cooker, ugh!
I had to go on a scavenger hunt throughout the city to find a large (and cheap) enough pot to  hold my jars and allow for a 2 inch cover of water. I finally found a canner in Walmart, the only one left.

I have also been doing some gardening. The soil in my area is the most amazing soil ever...it literally feels like potting soil so adding gardens is so easy to do. I don't know if I changed the gardens too much since my last post, but today I expanded the garden along the fence line. The way it was designed was soo......blaah. it looked like a narrow gutter running along the fence. I prefer to have some dimension to my gardens so I I made it deeper, and added some flow to the edge. Next year I hope to get more of a variety of perennials

Thrift finds:

 This brooch I found at a flea market. The owner said it belonged to her husbands mother...or was it grandmother..I'm pretty sure it was grandmother. Anyways, none of her kids wanted it...so I bought it for a twoonie! I love it! I think I'm going to become a brooch kind of girl

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This is a great mixing bowl complete with handle and pouring spout. great colour too!              

Sneak Peak Crafty stuff:

My dog keeps chewing up my pin cushion. I always come home to see that my cocker spaniel has become a pin cushion spaniel and I have to spend some time pulling pins out of her long furry ears. So I made myself a pin cushion and gave Olive the Blue pumpkin tomato thing that used to hold my pins. It also hold my measuring tape and other small notions.

FUN!

Here is a sneak peak at my quilt: 

Far from finished.