My Canning Debut

Ever heard of HouseParty.com? If not, you should go there pronto and sign up to host a house party. It's the coolest thing! I recently was selected to host a house party sponsored by Ball. Have I ever canned before? Nooo, but I have watched my mother a few times when I was little. Maybe that's why they chose me - so I could learn how. :-) Anyway, we had the house party on Memorial Day and had great fun. We had to make salsa and pepper jelly. Thank you, Ball!!

Sooo excited when the 25-pound party prize package showed up at my door.

I promptly unloaded all the goodies. Yes, that is a huge canner that I get to keep! There were awesome coupons and a nice reuseable shopping bag for everybody.

All the ingredients - ready and waiting!

Kelsey and Kaley were in charge of the garlic (I think they were more excited about wearing the gloves).

All gathering round the cool flip chart with step by step instructions.

Khara was in charge of stirring the salsa.

Jana let Mark sample some of the fresh salsa.

Yum - this recipe is a keeper!

Drew was a good supervisor!

Stirring the pepper jelly!

And of course, laughin' and talkin' in the process.

Funneling the goodness into jars!

Mark and Vicki tightening the jars!

The finished product - pepper jelly (that really tastes much better than it sounds).

Jana taking the salsa jars coming out of the water bath canner.

I'm definitely going to be doing this again. Canning is a lot easier than I thought it was and will be so good with fresh produce. :-)

The Little Red House

I was so excited to find this little red house at a garage sale. I wanted to get it, but was hesitant since I had no clue how I would get it home. A very kind lady that lived next door to the garage sale had her husband bring it to our house in his truck! Wow - how nice! Clayton absolutely LOVES it and wants to be in it nearly all the time.

He was very proud of the little flower he took out there and put on his table.

Addy and I were watching from these chairs. He decided to climb up in one and give her some kind of instruction.

He convinced Aaron to "come in, please."

Clayton definitely has gotten such good use out of this little house already - it's been worth every dime! :-)