Preserving the harvest: Blueberry Jelly

It's blueberry season around here.  We have a farm nearby that we can go pick blueberries and they are so yummy!!!  We went out and pick tons last weekend, while I was picking I thought that I should make some blueberry jelly.

First I had to extract the juice from the blueberries:

Put 4 cups of washed berries in a pot with enough water to prevent scorching and smash them to help the juice come from the berries.  Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

You are then suppose to have a jelly bag hanging over another pot and pour the blueberries into the jelly bag and allow the juice to drip through.  I didn't have any jelly bags or cheesecloth, instead I have a strainer that has really small holes and I set it on top of a 8 cup measuring bowl.  Next time I do this part I'm going to do it the night before and let it drip all night.  

Have clean warm canning jars ready.  I used half pint jars.

Then in a pot add 4cups of blueberry juice, 7 1/2cups sugar. Stir together on high heat continue stirring constantly and bring to a full roiling boil that cannot be stirred down.  Then add 2 bags of liquid pectin, heat again to a boil.  Boil hard for 1 minute.

The next part went by really fast I didn't take any pictures.

Remove from heat; quickly skim off foam.  Pour jelly immediately into hot canning jars, leaving 1/4inch headspace.  Wipe jars rims and adjust lids.  Process 5 minutes in a Boiling Water Bath.

Handmade Cards

The other day I was tell my mom that I needed to go buy some thank you cards.  She then reminded me that I have a cricut I could make them myself.  Thank you Mom!! I totally didn't even think about that!!  Here are some of the cards that I came up with:

I ran out of glue so I found a glue stick that was blue.  I wasn't thinking completely and used it because I was glue and was thinking that all glue sticks dried clear. Boy was I wrong!!!  Look at what happened with these:

Williamsburg

Part 2 of our trip!!!  We spent a couple of days in Williamsburg, we weren't even close to touching everything that you can do there.

They have a street drama that they do daily that is about how the Boston Tea Party affected them and they became involved with what was going on during that time.

You can actually rent rooms in some of the buildings for you visit.  I didn't know this until after we had already left that would be cool to stay in one of the homes in the town.

They have a really cool museum that you can look through.  My daughter loved the small carousel in the middle of one of the rooms.

They called this the public hospital but it was where they sent the people they thought were crazy.

Looking down the main street!!

Another view

Be careful you never know when you will get called into the militia to defend yourselves!!

We had a blast, it was a little warm but it was still a great experience.  We have already book a hotel to go back at Christmas time and see what they do (they decorate in the time period) and explore the town some more.