Thrifting Again, Garden Colors and More, Corn Relish, Dating Your Vintage Ball Jars

$4.00!

Thrifting Again- 

I've had the blahs the last week, sorry for not getting to this sooner! My daughter asked me the other night how I find so many great thrifting things? I told her in the summer, while I'm off, I have a lot more time to look. This week I found: 2 like-new high end blouses for work, a really like-new great lamp for my bedroom and a wire hanging candle holder. So I did find some more great things this week-

love the interior of the lamp shade

and the cork shade

$3.00, now I just need 3 led candles, then into the bedroom

I just re-did last month's summery bed pillow shams, from Crate and Barrel, but only $1.50 thrifted. I turned them into removable summer couch pillow covers. I had wanted a grain sack striped type fabric and these were perfect. Finished them tonite, and stayed with the original ties. Just shortened, hemmed and re-attached ties. Easy peasy! Just wash if needed and take off come winter...

old ones covered for summer

kind of goes with the grain sack chair covers!

Our mini lavender hummingbird plant

Garden Colors and More-
We've been so lucky to have had some rain and cooler weather in the last month, including a deluge! It gave the flowers and veggies a need respite from the early heat. Everything is growing great now! Now we're headed back to the 100-ish :(  Here's a little tour!

Agastaches, hummingbirds LOVE them!

monster Russian sage, bees loving it!!!

Another Agastache

Volunteer sunflowers

Pears getting bigger

apples changing colors!

Dave just finished the chicken shade area fence last night! All recycled...

Loving the new garden fence and gate :)  Looks more finished...

Coop's looking good!

Dave reused a old coop vent for a mini gate!

More yard art I've added, mostly thrifted or free. I had WAY too much bare fence-

vintage washboard I found, $3.00

Misc. stuff on the fence

rusty vintage grater, $2.00

my daughter's old college welding project for her art degree, rusty!

re-installed my welcome sign, that's it for now :)

Corn Relish-
I made some of this last week and we love it! Great as a side dish on a hot night with some leftover chicken, etc. Keeps for several weeks chilled. Here's the recipe I created based on several I saw.

Chilled and hanging out with my fermented pickles :)

5 cans corn (I used low sodium) and the juice, or fresh or frozen
1 each chopped- red bell pepper and green bell pepper
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 cup white sugar
1 teas. celery seed
1 teas. mustard seed
1 teas. Turmeric
1 large diced red onion
2 cups apple cider vinegar

Put everything into a large pot, still well, bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 1 hour. Transfer to jars and refrigerate. This recipe made 4 Qt. jars. Some recipes add cucumber, hot peppers, or tomato. I like this as is, but I may make a jalapeno spicy version next time.

Dating Your Vintage Ball Jars-
I stumbled onto the charts here and was able to date a few of my jars to the late 1800's and early 1900's. How cool is that! Makes me wonder who used them and for what? Some wonderful pickles, fruit, moonshine? Who knows! There are a lot of resources out there if you want to do more digging. There was even gold and purple ones! I just the love the aqua color of my Ball jars...