International Can-It Forward Day 2016!!!!

It's that time of the year again! When our gardens and the U-Pick-Its are starting to really produce. When it's time to start canning! When Ball® brand has there International Can-It Forward Event with lots of opportunities to learn and win  Ball® products!

So a little personal history before I start reviewing and talking about the AMAZING jam my daughter made...

I canned as a kid with my mom, and when I was invited to be a part of International Can-It-Forward, used the opportunity to teach my daughter to can. Since then, we have not bought any jams or jellies. That's one way I canned it forward- by learning from my mother and teaching my daughter.

This year, my garden had enough excess from my perennials that I was able to give plants to my friends to grow their own berries and rhubarb. That's another way to Can-It Forward- by sharing plants that you know are good producers with friends who like to can.

My daughter and I can a lot of jams and jellies and give them to friends and local charities. That's another way to Can-It Forward. Friends from hotter states see my raspberries and get excited knowing they will get some of the amazing jam made from it.

You can also teach people to can, give them a basic supply kit to start in small scale canning. That's another great way to Can-It Forward.

You can take the pledge here to learn about canning and share the love of canning and learn what Ball® brand is doing for charities in the spirit of Can-It Forward. You will also get a 5.00 off coupon for the Fresh Preserving Store for taking the pledge!

This year, the fine people at  Ball® brand sent me their new cookbook, The All New Book of Canning and Preserving, a case of those gorgeous blue wide mouth jars you see in the background of this photo and a $5.00 off coupon for the Fresh Preserving Store and will give the same thing to one of my lucky readers in the U.S.A.!!  Leave a comment to enter and we will pick a name at random to win on the 24th! Shipping will be directly from the prize supplier, and I'll need a way to contact the winner to get the information- email, FB page or Twitter account. 

So the book? We went through the recipes and there are a lot we are planning to try. My son is particularly enthused about the Fiery Fermented Hot Sauce recipe that uses habanero peppers. I like the idea of making my own Worcestershire sauce because we use it a lot. But it's the jellies and jams that we always look at first. We made the Strawberry-Rhubarb jam on page 30. There are soup recipes, instructions for making kombucha and other fermented goodness, sauces, seasoning mixes and all sorts of other yumminess that makes fantastic gifts or ways to save money and provide good food for your family and friends. 

Just as an aside, a couple weeks I commented on a photo on Ball Canning on Facebook  that I can never grow enough strawberries to can my own. A lot of people liked the comment so apparently I'm not the only one! We bought strawberries, but rhubarb, that amazing plant, we have plenty of that. So we chose between this and a rhubarb-orange marmalade. 

The jam is fantastic!! If you like Strawberry-rhubarb pie, you'll love this jam. It's like having dessert for breakfast. As soon as the photo above was taken, my daughter grabbed the English muffin. I think her face says it all. 

The book is full of great recipes that are clearly written with the steps written out very well for beginners. Like any of the Ball® publications, it has photo step by steps for canning methods.

If your a more visual learner, be sure to tune in on the Ball Canning Facebook page on Friday July 22nd for videos from 10:00AM – 3:30PM ET. Each hour, viewers will have the chance to win a giveaway prize!

During those hours, there will also be experts answering questions on their Twitter page- @BallCanning  #canitforward

You can also post things on Pinterest and Instagram using #canitforward and check out their Pinterest page here- Ball® Canning on Pinterest, BallCanning on Instagram.

Ooh..  I just opened this book at random and found a recipe for Summer Bounty Zucchini Relish that looks fantastic. I need to check my garden and see how my zucchini is doing.

Christmas Crochet- giveaway, review and blog tour!

It's the season to start really getting ready for Christmas. Edie Eckman, the author of some of my favorite crochet books* has written a wonderful collection of patterns to start decorating. Christmas Crochet for Hearth, Home and Tree is full of easy to accomplish, quick stitched patterns that look good and fit the season perfectly.

My favorite kind of crochet books have both written instructions and international crochet diagrams. This one has both. The written instructions are easy to follow, and the diagrams are clear, and easy to read. The patterns are good for all levels. For people who have been crocheting for a long time, things like the snowy looking 3 dimensional tree decorations will work up in an evening, and putting together enough socks and mittens for a sweet, homey advent calender can be done in a week of evenings. For beginners, they can get practice in following diagrams and simple shaping techniques using worsted weight yarns and simple stitches.

My son is just learning to crochet using another book from Storey, and he's going to help me make the Advent calender.

There are some wonderful Christmas stockings in here as well, and they are also made of worsted weight yarn. You'll find a pattern for everyone in your family so they can all have a different handmade stocking that suits their personality. Bright stripes, polka dots, a complex looking peppermint colored stocking done in seed stitch, some gorgeous single color stockings that use embellishments or texture for interest, and my favorite- the flame stitch stocking which has texture and great color work.

The Christmas tree ornaments are great. My favorite are the felted ornaments. They are worked in motifs and make a great take along project and a good project for beginners since felting is so forgiving. The little birds are another favorite, folksy and simply too cute for words.

The styles are on trend for a homey, comfortable Christmas. Bright colors and easy to find yarn are a winner.

I made one of the snowflake motifs from one of the stockings in thread to decorate a simple headband /bookmark made using 1/8th blue elastic and a button center.

I've been so busy working on a big project, doing some of the small and quick projects from this book is very relaxing.

Storey Publishing gave me a copy of this book to review, but will also give one of you a copy! USA only. Comment on this blog post with your crochet decorating plans for the season to enter or click the Ravelry link below and comment on this blog post with your favorite project. On Monday, November 17th, I'll put all the names in a stocking and let my daughter draw one winner to receive a copy. Don't forget to include some sort of contact information on the comment. Ravelry name, Facebook name or email address.

You can also check out the rest of this blog tour in the next couple of weeks to see projects from the book and get more chances to enter and win a copy!

Check out this book on Ravelry!

Facebook: Edie Eckman and Storey Publishing

Twitter: @EdieEckman and @StoreyPub

Instagram: @StoreyPub

3-Nov Don't Eat the Paste

4-Nov Moogly

5-Nov Liberty's Yarn

7-Nov Rambling Designs

10-Nov Plus 3 Crochet

11-Nov Crochet Dynamite

12-Nov Jenn Likes Yarn

13-Nov Crochet Nirvana

14-Nov Yarning4aSmile

A good place to sleep and a giveaway!!

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Better Sleep Council for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

A good night's sleep is one of the best things in the world for so many reasons. But sometimes it's pretty hard to sleep well. Having a good place to sleep is a good start.

Here's  a guide for how to get better sleep . My own tip? When there is a lot on my mind, I do word or math puzzles. Get into a comfortable position, close my eyes, breathe slowly and regularly. Pick a subject like animals, names or colors and work through the alphabet, or try to find as many words as possible in a phrase or longer word. Sometimes I'll draw a manala just in my thoughts, or count in Fibonacci sequence. It works pretty well. That's how I get on top for a good night's sleep.
The Better Sleep Council has a ton of information on their site, including some pretty fun things like what does your sleeping position say about your personality.
Between my back problems, and the fact that my husband is a large man, our mattress needed replacing recently. It had developed a husband shaped dip on his side that was making it hard for me to get really comfortable. My previous mattress was a high quality innerspring mattress. The fault in the mattress was simply that it was time to replace it, time and nightly use wore it out. If your mattress is more than 5 years old, you might need a new one.
So how do you shop for a new mattress?

• Check out how to buy a mattress.
• Start with research! There are a lot of types of mattresses out there. 
• Talk to friends, find out who they trust. As my husband says, you can buy mattresses nearly anywhere these days- but getting questions answered and finding the perfect mattress takes a little more time. You're could spend over 10,000 hours in the next 5 years on that mattress. Make sure it's the right one for you.
• Ask the questions. What are your issues? Weight, height, how much room you use when you sleep, how it handles heat, and explain what kind of support you like. 
• Test the mattress using the SLEEP method described on the Better Sleep Council's website.

It turns out that the store that my friends recommended to me is one that links to the Better Sleep Council from their website! So my husband and I went and tried out a lot of mattresses.

The person working was willing to answer all our questions and told us to take our time, to take a nap if we wanted to really know how good the mattress was for our sleeping style. He also had a measuring tape handy so if we needed measurements to figure out if we could fit it in our door, he could tell us. He was knowledgeable and super helpful.
So we got our new mattress, and how does it help? Like I said, we got it a few months ago. In that time, both my husband and I are sleeping better. He's woken up and his first words have been "I love our bed." My back, well, that's not going to be completely better, but because of the way our mattress dissipates heat and how well it contours, I'm not waking up in pain as often. My good days start out good.
So think about shopping for a new mattress on Memorial Day.
So the giveaway? There are actually 2!
Get on Top, win $1,000 giveaway like The Better Sleep Council on Facebook and enter the Get on Top Sweepstakes for a chance to win $1000.00
The giveaway on Don't Eat the Paste is for a $50.00 Visa Gift Card.
Open to US residents, 18+
Contest is open from now until May 30, 2014.
To Enter- just leave a comment on THIS post about your sleeping troubles and how a new mattress would help.
Read the official rules right here. Izea will pick a winner, and we will need a way to contact you so make sure you include an email address.

Book Review and Giveaway! Origami Flowers

Vertical Inc. is one of my favorite publishers around because they translate Japanese books to English- include a growing number of craft and cookbooks. To make things even better- they sent me an extra copy of this book to giveaway! The giveaway is for US residents only. I'm sorry about that. Whoever wins will also get some Alaskan postcards- mostly because I love picking them out to put into packages that I'm sending down south! The winner will get the English version shown above. The version shown below is to show the original book that was translated!

Origami Flowers is an English translation of Hana No Origami. It features a lovely collection of blossoms. Some of them are abstract and stylized and some are very realistic. Like a lot of Japanese books- there are scissors used in some of the models. Mostly they are to create decorative edges that further define a type of flower.

The diagrams are traditional style, but this is a good book for beginners. It features a full guide to reading traditional diagrams and each of the models is marked for difficulty level.

Beginners will get comfortable fast, folding the simpler models, and building up to the trickier models. A lot of the models use several sheets of paper. The gorgeous rose in the center of the book cover reminds me quite a bit of stained glass roses. It's sculptural and it's one of the simplest models in the book, it gets it's many petaled look by using several sheets of paper. This could become one of my all time favorite models pretty easily.

Card makers will enjoy the elegance of several of the flat flowers, and jewelry paper crafters will also see a good use for a lot of these pretty flowers.

More practical models include a couple decorated envelopes, and there is a whole section dedicated to "Practical Flowers". I'm wild for practical origami, in fact one of my favorite origami books ever is Practical Origami (also published by Vertical Inc), so this is one of my favorite sections of the book. Pretty bowls that look like sculptured flowers that are made using paper napkins, decorated chopstick cases and dishes. These are very pretty models that would work very well for entertaining.

Want your own copy? You can get it on Amazon and help out this page, or you might be able to win a copy!

a Rafflecopter giveaway U.S.A. U.K.
I received a complimentary copy of this book to review, I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the book. You can read more about my review policy here.

National Can-It-Forward Day- giveaway!

National Can-It-Forward Day is winding down. But the fun doesn't have to stop. Ball has lots of links, recipes and videos posted year round.

What did we do? More jellies! We have lots of friends who can, and have exchanges with them, I really recommend it. Find out who cans, or who you know who has an interest in it. What they grow, what they might want to can and preserve will be different from what you want to do. It's a fun way to try all sorts of things. For example, one of my best friends does amazing mixed fruit jams, but doesn't do salsa or pickles. I grow cilantro and dill for canning salsas and green beans. So we swap, and return each other's jars filled with new things.
You can find my son's favorite pickled pepper recipe HERE.

Ball is sponsoring giveaways on a whole bunch of blogs, including mine! The idea is to get more people enthused about canning.

This giveaway is open to US residents only.

This is the the Ball Canning Discovery Kit. The basket is made of polypropylene which works just fine at boiling temps and will hold 3 pint jars easily. It fits into your lidded stock pot for hot water bath canning and comes with jars and a basic how to can booklet. I have one, and use it regularly. Ball sent me a second one for this year's Can It Forward Day, and it belongs to my daughter who wanted her own set. Perfect for small batch canning, or for beginners who want to start with small batches. 

Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving- Beyond just canning, this also covers dehydrating and freezing food to preserve it. Essential for the beginning canner, and a helpful reference for people who have been canning a while. This is updated regularly for the very newest information on safe canning, has lots of full color photos and clear explanations on how to can, and instructions and recipes for almost everything the home canner needs. I have several years worth of Ball's Blue Book and recommend it. The recipe for the rhubarb above was done from this book by my daughter who has never canned before this year.
(Want cute rhubarb labels? Look here!)

The other part of the prize package is a coupon good for 1 case of jars, which come with lids and bands. , Ball jars have been the standard for home canning for as long as I remember. They are uniform, easy to find replacement bands and lids for, they are great quality, and will last for years. The compound on the lids seals effectively and easily.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Ball Canning provided the products reviewed for me free of charge. There was no other compensation, and this is my honest opinion of the products. And my daughter made jam, jelly and preserves by herself and has the canning bug in a big way. This morning I got to enjoy fruit punch jelly on toast and it was fantastic!

Diamond Candles review and giveaway

Diamond Candles recently asked me if I'd be willing to do a review of their candles, with a giveaway for Don't Eat the Paste readers. I love candles. They don't need a special surprise for me to love them, candle light, and a nice scent is going to be enough. The surprise though? That's kind of like being a kid with a box of cereal and a toy surprise except better. All the photos in the collection above were taken by me.

They sent me a code to get a free candle for the review. I talked to my daughter, and she chose Cupcake scent. The candles are soy candles, which mean very little soot, and a nice clean burn. Plus soy candles can handle a heavier fragrance load than standard paraffin candles and are more environmental friendly. Because soy is a soft wax, it's perfect for container candles.

The candle itself- it has a warm, baked vanilla sugar scent. Nothing too sweet, it's more grown up than that. A very homey scent, with a great throw (how far the fragrance travels while the candle is burning). I could smell this one from 12 feet away. Not a strong smack you in the face scent like room spray can be. Just comfortable.

The container- Diamond Candles has a Pinterest board of craft ideas for empty containers. The containers are very nice. All glass with a label that can be removed with a bit of work and a tight fitting lid. Their fans buy candles regularly enough that some have had some very clever ideas for re-use. Mine will probably wind up on either my Dad's or husband's desk at work holding wrapped candy or small things they need at their jobs. They can also be repurposed to hold things like cotton swabs and such in a bathroom, decorated all sorts of ways.

The ring- Were you one of those people who dumped out the whole box of cereal to get to the toy surprise? Or did you patiently serve up bowls waiting to get to it? There are people who just can't wait and dig for the ring. It's placement is marked with a foil disk on the inside of the container. You can also just let the candle burn. We opted to let it burn. Soy wax has a fairly low melt temperature, so when it got down far enough, I pulled the little foil pack with a pair of long tweezers. The ring is in a zip baggie wrapped in foil and won't be all encrusted with wax.

They have rings worth anywhere from 10-5000 dollars in the candles. Obviously, most of them will be fashion rings worth about 10 dollars retail, but there are more expensive rings put in at random. The company would rather spend advertising money that way then on lots of ads. It works for them, they have a trading post where people can trade for the rings they would prefer, or trade with other people who got rings too big or too small. I'm not trading the ring I got, it was a 10 dollar fashion ring, but it just happens to be just the right size for my daughter, and it's her birthstone.

It's a lot of fun! I already have the coupon code for the winner to get one free candle. So go enter! Part of entering is liking Diamond Candles on Facebook and they also have regular giveaways there for their candles.

 a Rafflecopter giveaway

[The product reviewed was provided to me at no cost for the purposes of review. I received no other compensation, and my review is my honest opinion of the product.]

It's My Birthday- Retro Owl Tape Giveaway

It's my birthday today! So I'm giving away presents. 5 people can win one roll each of Retro Owl Duck® Brand Duct  Tape. I'll even autograph the rolls. I'm sorry, but because of shipping costs, this is USA only. 

So how do you enter? Leave a comment. It's that simple. Make sure you give me some way to get in touch with you if you're the winner. Email address or Ravelry name will do nicely.

Extra entries? Sure. Leave a comment for each one of these that you do-
Follow me on Pinterest
Like Shala's Beadwork and Printables on FB
Share this giveaway on Twitter, Pinterest or FB (link to this page, leave a comment with the link of the page you shared it on)
This giveaway will start today, May 16, 2013 and end on my husband's birthday- June 12, 2013.
Winners will be drawn randomly by The Amazing Turnip Girl.

Good Luck!!

Giveaway Winner and Free Template

And the giveaway winner of "At Home With Handmade Books" is Rachel, who had the ninth comment. Rachel, I sent you an email. Thank you Shambhala Publications for sponsoring this fun giveaway!

Thank you all for participating. I hope that you enjoy this template as a consolation. It's a pillow box made to fit Tazo teabags. Yum yum Tazo tea. I'm fond of the Passion, TG and my husband love the Wild Sweet Orange. Click the image for a larger version.