Grape Jelly

A few Sunday's ago I was out yard sale hunting, looking for good deals on things I could use. One of the things I was looking for were old mason jars used for canning. I have never canned anything before, I wanted them for Christmas gifts. An inexpensive, yet thoughtful, gift to family and friends are homemade sweets in a jar. Well, I came upon an estate sale that had been going on since Friday and was in the finale day of the sale. Long and behold THEY HAD MASON JARS! The exact size I was looking for! I made a deal with the nice lady to take all 70 of them off her hands for just $10, which is only about 14 cents a jar.



Now I don't have 70 people on my shopping list, which made me think that to save a little extra cash maybe I should try canning. My sitter-in-law was about to come for a visit from the-middle-of-nowhere PA. (It is a very rural area) and she has tons of fruits and veggies growing on her property. When she found out we had so many jars she offered to pick some of her concord grapes so we could make jelly. Well she brought about 30 lbs. of grapes with her and we spent over 5 hours making 10 jars of grape jelly and about 2 gallons of grape juice, and the only cost to me was $1.40 for the jars.



It would take me forever to use 10 jars of jelly, so we kept 5. I won't have to buy jelly now for at least a year!