The Cottage Smallholder

Just a thought - does anyone have any ingenious way of marking their jars so they know the jam from the chutney ones?

Terrier said:

Same here, I cheat and buy gingham patterned muffin cases from sainsbury's (75 for less than a quid), they come in packs of red and blue and sit lovely as little covers with elastic bands. I use red for the savourys and blue for the jams. They look lovely on my stall and are much easier that what I did last year, which was cutting up oddments of material and using that.

I still do that for hampers, but for the rest the sainsbury bun cases are brill

Great idea and will definitely be doing that for my supply in the pantry but I have had to put quite a bit of my stock into boxes in the garage as the dreaded builders are due and then realised how hard it would be to identify the contents of the jars (I have kept chutneys separate from the jams). So, thought maybe I would buy circular labels and just print a picture on them of whatever was in jar and that way I could instantly see from the top what was in jar.....but how blooming difficult is it to buy round labels  Have found a couple of companies that sell them on A4 sheets. There are 24 labels per sheet and they are 45mm diameter but cheapest I could find was £15.79 per box of 20 sheets. Thats a lot of labels but an expensive way to solve the problem especially as I label everything with contents on the front as well.

By the way Jan, what did you rename your hedgerow jelly in the end and was it a success?

Yes you are quite right - it isn't really necessary and I should have thought it through before wasting my time on computer yesterday looking for labels

You have given me a really good idea - I think I'll get my grandsons to cut out paper covers and decorate them for me with fruit or whatever is appropriate for the jars.

They love messing about with paper and art work so it will keep them amused as well.

Thank you Supreme Being - just what I needed

  That me laugh out loud - I had exactly same done to my efforts a few years ago. What we have to put up with eh? My youngest grandson is now 10 but he still spends hours drawing and fiddling about with bits of paper and glue. He is what I would describe as an old fashioned 10 year old (thank God), he still loves the simple things in life and is a complete joy to have around - most of the time. He's not perfect, but he does make me laugh. The eldest is 12 (going on 20) and going through the grumpy teenager stage meaning he is bored with just about everything, but I still catch him sneaking a sideways look when he sees us rolling around laughing or doing something daft and you can see he would really love to join in, but that wouldn't be cool now would it.