How to make Currant Jam

 These little red delicious berries, sugar, and some preparation is all it takes to make them into a wonderful jam.

We picked a whole bowl full from this pretty plant below.

Washed them, left the stems on and put them in a pot with a lot of sugar. The official ratio is 7 cups of sugar to 4 quarts of berries, but we just dumped in sugar 'till it looked like this:

Stir and cook for twenty minutes or until it looks a bit like jam.

Then strain out the stems and seeds.

(carefully it is very hot, it helps to have two people for this step)

Let cool for a few minutes till no longer scalding hot and then pour into jam jars.

Seal the jars to store in a pantry up to a year. Or store in freezer with the lids on securely for up to a year.  They do not have to be sealed to store in the freezer. 

I do this with currants, raspberries, and blackberries. Only with raspberries I use some pectin in the mix as well. Then I store them all in the freezer until the kids go back to school in the fall and pull them out one at a time as needed. A few special jars are marked and set aside for Christmas gifts.

Beautiful jams are SO easy to make.

Summer Lemonade (and Thrifting)

What is it that makes Lemonade so lovely in the Summer sunshine?

I used our bistro table to set up this little side table next to the table we have under the apple tree. It is a nice shaded little area in our yard, cool and relaxing.

I have wanted to put together a little place for lemonade for some time, when I stumbled across this lemonade dispensing pitcher (still with the tag on the bottom of it), second hand from goodwill. It was marked $12.99, but it had a blue tag, and on that day the blue tags were only $1.29. I cannot tell you how quickly (and gently) this went into my cart!

Then nearly a day later I stumbled across these adorable cups from the dollar tree. I was so thrilled.

A nice treat for summer. And a pleasant place for the family in the sunshine.

Happy Summer!

Watermelon Fruit Salad

Pretty little way to celebrate summer is with a Watermelon Fruit Salad.

We like to hull out the watermelon and combine it with:

Cantaloupe, blueberries, raspberries, peaches, orange slices, bananas, whatever you can think of, and top it with mint leaves from the garden.

And for a smaller portion you can fill a cantaloupe.