Projects on Hold

Lately it seems that everything I try to do has to get put on hold because I'm missing some essential ingredient for the project. We have a membership to a CSA, and every week when I go to pick out delicious home-grown fruits and veggies, I jealously eye the pickling cucumbers. Finally I decided to just go for it, and ordered some spice mixes to make your own refrigerator pickles! I was so excited that I rushed out to the CSA to pick up my cucumbers... and they didn't have any! Extreme disappointment. Never fear, I thought, I'll just buy some at a roadside stand. Before I did that, though, I realized that I'll need some place to put the pickles! At the moment I only have about half a dozen canning jars, and they're mostly being used to store craft things. So I set out yesterday to buy canning jars at the hardware store. First I went to Home Depot. No luck. Try WalMart, they said. Instead, I tried Lowes. And Target. Both void of any kind of canning products. So I went to WalMart. After wandering around the store for about a half hour, I finally broke down and asked someone where they would be. "Across from the Jewelery Counter," she said, "...if we have any left." I rushed over to find three lone canners, lots of pickling lime and salt, and no canning jars of any kind or size. Perhaps I shouldn't wait until the end of the growing season to start these things.

Still in the mood to "make" something, I decided to look up a recipe to make pesto, since I have a basil plant that is going crazy and I can't come up with enough things to make with it. And of course, wouldn't you know it, a main ingredient in pesto is pine nuts. Who just has pine nuts randomly laying around the house? Not me.

So today I'm going to try a different WalMart. I won't give up on you, pickles!

There was a bonus side note to all the running around looking for canning jars yesterday. While at Home Depot, I picked up a handful of paint samples!!! Those things always get me excited. So much possibility...

In the meantime, here are a couple cute magnets I made the other day. Enjoy!