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1. Easy Refrigerator Dill Pickles

This was the easiest dill pickle recipe! All you have to do is make up the brine, slice up your cucumbers, and stick everything in jars! Let it sit in the fridge for a week and voila – dill pickles! My husband and kids loved it. I like them too (admittedly I’m not a huge dill pickle fan) but think I got a little too much garlic in there. I’ll add a little less next time.

What’s even better? You can reuse the brine – just add new cucumber slices to the jar of brine and let it sit another week. Sweet deal. You can find the recipe by Self Proclaimed Foodie here.

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2. Best Homemade Peach Jam

I’ve already made two batches of this delicious peach jam and just bought peaches to make more this weekend! My second batch turned out better than my first, as my fruit was overripe the first time and I didn’t mash it like the recipe instructed. I had some “fruit float” happen, but it still tasted great and sealed just fine, thankfully. Be sure to mash your fruit!

I especially love the addition of cinnamon to this jam. The kids have been enjoying it on their peanut butter sandwiches, I’ve been eating it on toast and pancakes, and everyone wants to lick the spoon after we’re finished preparing our meal!

The recipe calls for using 8oz jars and processing for 5 minutes. While it is best to follow the recipe exactly and you’re technically not supposed to size up jars for a recipe, all I had were 16oz jars. I increased the processing time to 10 minutes and it worked just fine. You can read more on processing times here, and can find this delightful jam recipe by Barefeet In The Kitchen here.

3. Quick Bread and Butter Pickles

What are “bread and butter” pickles? They’re both sweet and a little sour – sliced pickles with onion mixed in, which are great for burgers and sandwiches. They’re old fashioned pickles said to be from the depression era when people would eat them between two slices of buttered bread as a sandwich.

While this recipe by America’s Test Kitchen does require a subscription, you can sign up for their free 14-day trial and snag all the recipes you want during that time! (If you’re on the fence about signing up, they really are a great resource.) I’m not affiliated with them – I just like them.

The bread and butter pickle recipe is for refrigerator pickles, meaning they don’t need to be canned, but I chose to process them anyway. My mom has done it many times with great results. I used 8oz jars, left 1/4 inch headspace, and processed them for 10 minutes. They all sealed fine.

Canning Equipment & Accessories

Here are some tools I’ve been using and loving!

My canner – it’s been working like a charm! I love that it has a color coded gauge on top to tell me when the processing time starts.

I’m in love with these sweet vintage-inspired labels!

This funnel is awesome and has a ruler on it for measuring headspace.

Love my canning scoop – it has a clip on the side to keep it from sliding into the pot.

This jar lifter is easy to grip!

I hope this has inspired you to do a little end of Summer preserving in your cottage kitchen! Let me know if you try these canning recipes and enjoy them! I’ll be busy making more peach jam, more pickles, and hopefully some plum jam this weekend!

Drop a comment below with your favorite thing to preserve/can!

Blessings,
Melissa

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This post contains affiliate links for which I may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases. Please click here for more details. I truly appreciate your support!

This post contains affiliate links for which I may earn a small commission on qualifying purchases. Please click here for more details. I truly appreciate your support!

A few weeks ago I had a friend ask me if I would be willing to make her a new Spring wreath. Her favorite one was deteriorating after a few years of use. I agreed, and when I got the chance the girls and I stopped by Michael’s Craft Store one morning while my son was at school. Lo and behold, all their Spring florals were 50% off! Woohoo!

My goal was to create a wreath that played on the same themes as my friends’ old favorite:

Lots of small, delicate flowers in a variety of textures and colors mixed together on a bed of foliage.

Almost sounds like a salad recipe now that I read that – ha!

There is really no one way to make a wreath – a lot of it comes down to personal preference and making it work for your style and space. However, I’ll share the supplies and technique I used to build this one, as well as a few tips for putting together your own wildflower wreath.

Also, thanks to McGlynn Farm for gifting me this cute wildflower t-shirt! You can find this sweet shirt here, along with many other lovely finds for your home! (Sorry about the spots – it was raining on me!)

Supplies needed for a wildflower wreath:

• A grapevine wreath form (the one I used was 18 inches in diameter)
• A variety of faux florals and foliage
• Scissors for cutting off tags
• Wire cutters (I like these by Husky)
• Optional floral wire

I tried to be super organized and proactive and saved all my floral tags so that I could link the specific florals I used in this wildflower wreath for you, but unfortunately I could only find one of them on the Michael’s website. Ugh! Any similar flowers will do, though. Here are a few to consider:

How to build a wildflower wreath:

There are many ways to attach stems to a wreath form. Personally, I’m comfortable with just trimming my floral stems (still leaving them semi-long) and sticking them directly into the grapevine wreath form. They will definitely stay this way as long as no one is intentionally pulling them out. I’ve seen people hot glue their stems in, but this does not appeal to me as I like the flexibility of taking flowers out and rearranging them while building my wreath. I’m a design-as-I-go type of person.

You can also secure them with floral wire if you so desire. It’s definitely more work, but will ensure that your flowers will stay put for a long time. (You can see that demonstrated in my YouTube video below.)

That being said, I do still lay out all my flowers at the beginning to get an idea of what I would like to do.

In keeping with the style of my friend’s previous wreath, I decided to do blocks of color. If you’d like a more mixed look, by all means feel free to mix your flowers together! I’m really partial to the color block look, though.

While there is no one right way to put together a wreath, here are a few tips:

• Keep all your florals and foliage “flowing” in the same direction, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. This will help keep it from feeling too chaotic.
• Be sure to place your stems toward the “outside” and “inside” of your wreath circle – not just a straight line around the wreath form – this will help give it fullness and depth.
• Be sure to overlap your stems, meaning the flowers/leaves of one bunch cover the stem of the preceding bunch.
• Don’t forget that you can modify faux florals to fit your needs. Too many leaves on that flower? Slide them off or cut them off to keep your wreath from looking too bushy!

There you have it – a simple wildflower wreath that will serve you Spring through Summer!

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Thanks for reading!

Blessings,

Melissa

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I’ve been running this little feature for several months in my Instagram stories and just last week switched to a post format. I’ve also been trying to come up with a way to include it on the blog – and here we finally are! Every Sunday, I share a recipe that I love (sometimes by me, often by other people) and tell you a bit about why I love it, plus any tips I may have. Featured photos are always of my own finished product. I also invite you to send me any recipe you think I should try! If I like it, I may feature it and give you a shout out!

This week’s recipe is “Homemade Strawberry Cake” by Sally at Sally’s Baking Addiction, with “Strawberry Whipped Cream” by Lindsay at Life, Love, and Sugar. We had this as our Fourth of July dessert and it was a hit! I used whipped cream icing instead of Sally’s recommended cream cheese frosting because my husband won’t touch anything that has cream cheese in it. My Mother-In-Law doesn’t like butter-based icings, so whipped cream was a safe choice! I have to tell you, though, they paired really well together!

Here’s a tip: If you over-whip your whipped cream and it starts to look curdled (grainy, watery), don’t despair! Gently whisk in a tablespoon or two of cold whipping cream a little at a time and it should smooth back out.

I love to try new recipes! Feel free to send some my way, either in comments below or message me on social media!

[Striped tablecloth pictured is linked in my Amazon Storefront – you’ll find it under the “Featured Home Decor” section.]

Blessings,
Melissa

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Have you ever done a project that was totally not even on your radar until *bam* inspiration struck, you immediately did it, and you loved the result? That is the best kind of project!

After playing for church one Sunday, I ran over to Michael’s craft store to make a quick return on my way home. (Let’s be honest here – is a trip to a craft store ever actually quick?) I happened to notice that their Spring and Summer floral was 60% off and made my way over to that corner. Maybe it’s the summer heat and humidity making me crave something refreshing, but I’ve been a bit obsessed with lemons lately: I put some vintagey lemon prints in our family room and bought a new coffee cup with lemons all over it. So as I was wandering the floral section, it suddenly hit me: “I’m going to turn my plain old boxwood wreath into a lemon wreath!” While the kids were napping that afternoon, I did just that, and it took all of about 20 minutes!

A while back I had purchased a boxwood wreath from Hobby Lobby when they had their wreaths 50% off, and I hung it in the kitchen on the door to our garage. While it did add some color to the space, it had the potential to be so much more.

I really didn’t have a plan…

…but I bought some supplies anyway (dangerous, I know!). And you know what? I think it all worked out!

Easy DIY Lemon Wreath Tutorial

Supplies:

• 1 Boxwood Wreath approx. 18-20″ in diameter. I got mine at Hobby Lobby, but it looks like they no longer have it online (check an actual Hobby Lobby store & make sure to use a coupon!) Or Amazon has this one and this one, which are similar to mine.
• 1 5ft. Lemon & Summer Berry Garland. I found mine at Michael’s, but unfortunately it looks like they no longer have it. This one and this one are both similar. Any 5ft. mini garland with some blossoms would look nice.
• 1 Artificial Lemon “Bush” (7 lemons). These are the ones I used.
• 1 Spool Navy & White Striped Ribbon. I used this. It is unwired, but you could certainly use wired as well.
• Wire Cutters
• Scissors
• Optional: Floral Wire. I didn’t use any and feel like my wreath is fine, but if you want to make the whole thing really secure, feel free to use some.

Let me preface all this by saying there is no one “right way” to do this – just play around with it and have fun! Your wreath will probably turn out a little differently than anyone else’s and that’s okay!

Want to know a little secret? My wreath is not actually hanging from the ribbon – it is hanging from a command adhesive by a metal loop on the back of the wreath. The ribbon is just for show. Want to know a bigger secret? The end of the ribbon is scotch-taped on the top edge of my door. I’m really classy like that. Feel free to secure the end with a command hook!

Hang on your door and enjoy!

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