Jammin'?

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble....to aleviate some of the stress of planning our wedding and buying our first home all in the next six months, Cory and I have taken to some, er, different hobbies. Including canning. Yep, like the fruit preserves that stocked my great grandma's kitchen in Montana. And I have to say, there's nothing like homemade strawberry preserves (and nothing like knowing what EXACTLY went into the food you're eating).

It all started with a gift certificate given to us by a family friend--the tricky part about receiving a gift to a bookstore for you and your fiance is finding something you both want to read. After perusing the home improvement shelves for about an hour, we found a book called Storey's Basic Country Skills. This book has everything we could possibly want to know about...well, everything we didn't know we wanted to know. Home improvement, gardening, livestock (somehow I don't think our new HOA will approve), and of course...canning. Of course it helps that we're both pretty handy and like to cook, so this manual has provided quite a bit of entertainment. Here it is in all of its delicious glory:


We've also tried spaghetti sauce and grape jelly, one batch of which was more like grape syrup...but who ever said cooking wasn't a learning experience?!?


OK, OK, enough about my adventures in the kitchen. What have I been knitting lately? Honestly, not much. Between filling out forms for the bank, meeting with this person and that person, etc. about all I've had time to work on is my NCAA Team beanie and scarf (in the colors of my alma mater, UNR, of course!).


And of course I've been working on something top-secret for the Littlest Bean...but that'll have to be revealed later ;-)




*Ashley*