Beautiful Day

Fall is here!  It is another beautiful day on the Gulf Coast, so I am out to enjoy it before it gets too hot.  Yesterday was a full and awesome day for me, and I am on my way to retirement!  I hope to till some ground today so that I can have a spring garden, but that tiller is so big....it might just kick my butt!  Never know till you try right?   We also talked about going to the bait store and getting some earth worms to help a garden flourish.  Any suggestions or feedback on spring gardens is appreciated.  Mean while at the pumpkin patch......

Aunt Grandma's peanut brittle

So, my daddy always told me I made the best peanut brittle and I should sell it.  I believed him, so I did.  Thank you daddy for the encouragement....until next time!

Peanut brittle ingredients...quite simple actually...

Temporary packaging but this is the general idea.  I want to use items such as bamboo and jute string to make them look more country, and more like grandma's place.

My very FIRST sale.  It looks like my goodies will have a market.  Folks really liked the samples and liked the reasonable pricing on them,  I am so looking forward to the day this is what I do for retirement!  Woo hoo!

Working toward retirement

Well I only have a little over a year before I can retire my job of 20 years, and here is what I am working on for now....Hopefully when I get more product I can go to our local farmers market to sell my semi homemade salsa.  It's called Aunt Grandma's Chunky Salsa.  Had I known it was so easy peasy I would have been doing it a long time ago.  Been getting a lot of postive feedback on the finished product. 

Sterilizing lids and utensils......

Sterilizing the jars and funnel

The water bath.  I added a towel to the pot to keep the jars from hitting against each other.

My mama's pot that she used 50+ years ago to sterilize baby bottles.

Cooling and waiting for the pop that excites me so much.  My handy dandy jar lifter upper is new to me, and boy did it make it a lot easier!

The finished product. 

and this is ME right now.....until next time.

New Project

Okay, I started a new project last night. When I got about half way through, I realized I had not taken a "before" picture. Now I'm not sure I should take an "after" picture? I hope it turns out as nicely in actuality as it looks in my head. That's the trouble with coming up with these new ideas, I'm not sure if they will be successful or not. BUT, if I don't do it then it definitely would not be successful right? So I'm off to blunder my way through it and hope it turns out. I'll post pictures if I think it looks okay. In the meantime I wanted to share this beauty with y'all....until next time.

Salsa

I finally successfully canned my home made salsa. I got way too excited when all the jars would "pop" meaning they had sealed. I was doing little Snoopy dances and clapping my hands everytime a jar would pop, and if you had seen me you would have probably wondered about my sanity! However, this is the very FIRST thing I have ever canned, and fear of failure had prevented me from making it before now. I canned my salsa three days ago and have already sold five jars with an order for four more. I am just way too excited, but as I said before I am easily entertained. Will keep adding pictures for all of the things I have/am learning to create. Not nearly as difficult as I would have thought....until next time.

I have more bounty in my yard.  The pear tree produced LOTS of pears this year and they have been really good!

Now to figute out how to get those down from there!  I shook some of the limbs to get some of the pears from the top, but I got bonked on the head and shoulders....ended that!

AND I juiced the pears in the food processor, strained them twice and even learned how to can the juice!  I was too excited about learning this project. I have been wanting to learn to can for quite some time.

Bountiful Harvest

I love this time of year with all the fresh vegetables and fruits. This was the bounty in my home this past week, thanks to my beautiful sisters, and the only part of it I picked were the blueberries. I did forget to add the watermelon in the picture....but it sure was good.