Yeah for Canning!

I did a lot of really fun things this weekend. My mom came down on Saturday and we went wedding shoe shopping with no success. I did find this really cute pair of purple fuzzy shoes but we gave up because we thought they wouldn't go with my dress. I should have gotten married in purple! Then that night was my bridal shower/bachelorette party. Some friends of mine and my moms met us down at Suite 1901 for drinks and present unwrapping. There were so many presents! Mom mailed out invitations to my family and I'm so thankful they sent so many beautiful things. I now have 8 place settings of plum fiesta ware, three stainless steel mixing bowls, a bamboo cutting board and nice knife, a stack-able mug set, wine glass set, earring, Victoria Secret gift card...not to mention all the Macy's gift cards, money, and the things mom bought me for canning!

Speaking of canning! Mom, my future mother-in-law and I canned apple butter for for wedding favors on Sunday. It was sooo much fun, I'm going to start canning everything in sight. We couldn't have done it without my mother in laws neighbor's chinois sieve. It looks like this:

It's such an amazing contraption and I'm going to have to buy one because you can use it to make homemade apple and spaghetti sauce. and it's just so much fun to use. There's nothing like home made apple sauce. All you do is put the cooked apples in the cone (they have to be boiled to the point they are splitting their skins) and then use the pestle to smash them against the sides. All the apple mush leaks out the sides of the cone. It's a perfectly tasty and messy way to spend a cold rainy fall afternoon. Then you add a whole bunch of spices and lemon juice and cook the stuff down till it's brown and tangy. Then we canned everything - I have so many grand schemes for next fall - green beans and garlic, my grandmothers mince meat, spaghetti sauce, pears, peaches, apple sauce, jellies, peppers - There's so many things that I could do! I guess right now there's this whole revolution of canning going on, but my mom and her family always canned - especially tomatoes and apples. I'm excited about putting my spin on canning. This next weekend I'm going to work on pumpkin butter for the wedding favors.

The other awesome thing that happened this weekend is that I finally moved into my studio down at Clay Paper Scissors! My mother in law helped me move in my table and move my shelves. There's so much wall space! I'm gonna hang all kinds of crazy things up. There's a huge fiber show in Wichita coming up and I'm hoping to get a few pieces put together and work on some crazy ideas in the meantime. I'm also finally getting a laptop so that I can work on selling/websites better. So many good things are happening.