Creating Smiles Day 3: Hope Sewell

Hey everybody!  I'm Hope from Seasons With The Sewells.  I'm so excited to be here today with the Hannah Handmade team.  I love the whole idea of spreading some love and Creating Smiles. In The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner writes: "The love for equals is a human thing-of friend for friend, brother for brother.  It is to love what is loving and lovely.  The world smiles.  The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing-the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely.  This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.  The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing-to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man.  The world is always bewildered by its saints.  This is God's love.  It conquers the world." Everyone needs a little love and a reason to smile.  Here was our idea to bring a little smile to the faces of those around us. Homemade Blueberry Jam Here's how we got started.  I had LOTS of fresh blueberries!!  Grab some sugar and fruit pectin and you are ready to go. I put 4 cups of blueberries into a large, heavy pot and let my children mash them up.  They started out with spoons... and then moved to their hands to make sure they got the job done.  Once all the berries were coarsely mashed up, I stirred in 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 6 tablespoons of fruit pectin to the pot.  You could also use one individual package of fruit pectin. Bring all of this to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring constantly.  Once it's fully boiling, let it cook for a minute. Then ladle your jelly into very clean jars leaving an inch of space at the top to make room for expansion in the freezer. Once cooled to room temperature, you can store it in the refrigerator or freeze it for later. Now....I also made a smoother version of this jam.  Sometimes texture is a big deal to me.  ;)  So for that, I took the same amount of berries and pureed them in my food processor.  Then strained the berries into my large, heavy pot. I cooked it up the same exact way.  I love that it's nice and smooth. After all of the jelly was put into jars and cooled to room temp we add a simple little label and a string of twine.   I used a sweet little Martha Stewart punch on the corner.  Love it!! Here are some of the sweet faces that we brought smiles to. My grandmother. And our next door neighbors. We have given our jam to many of our neighbors and friends who just need a little something to smile about.  Ask yourself how you might be able to bring a smile to someone's face this week. Thanks for having me Hannah!! Hugs!!