Wedding flower pictures

Matching ceremony arrangements

The dinner table 

The florist did such an amazing job with the arrangements.  A big thank you goes out to Emily at Belle Fiori for working with us to provide very tasteful and personal arrangements to help frame the day.  It was very special to have our own home grown varieties in the arrangements as this is not something a florist can easily do, not knowing her supplier.  We definitely recommend her services to anyone!

The bride

What's in your canning kettle?

I have been enjoying a little bit of domestic time now that the wedding is done and the flowers are no longer on the top of my list.  I will post pictures, but I promised my daughter that she gets first dibs on posting wedding pics.  She wants to share them with the florist first, who was absolutely terrific in working with us.

I thawed out the eight gallon bags I stowed in the freezer and made my spaghetti sauce this weekend.  When you start from frozen, it takes a bit more time.   Little by little I got them in the electric roaster and cooked them down.  A bit of this and a bit of that and 24 hours later, I had 10 quarts and seven pints of spaghetti sauce and an additional four pints of chili sauce.  I made a modification to the spaghetti sauce and added two tablespoons (minimum) of red wine vinegar to each quart of sauce to raise the acidity.  I water bath canned them instead of pressure canning with the increased acidity.  I have no meat in my sauce when I can it.  All should be good according to my research on the adaptation.  The chili sauce was in the Ball Book.  The smell of this cooking was delicious with all the spices and vinegar cooking down for several hours.

I also had a few pounds of pears from the neighbor.  We ate several fresh, but they start to over-ripen quickly so they are now pear chutney which I made from The Pickled Pantry.   This recipe also smelled so good as it was bubbling on my stove top.

I have windfall apples from my sister chilling in the frig for a new batch of applesauce.  Don't you just love autumn?!

Wedding flowers on the way!

I got up early with my buckets and scissors and headed out to the garden yesterday morning.  I carefully selected and trimmed each flower and tucked them into my buckets.

The best of the best went to Belle Fiori for their addition to the table and church arrangements.  Zinnias were definitely my go to flower for this was my most heavily planted as well as the most seasonally select in my garden.  The hydrangea bush still had a few blooms on it with a nice pink blush so those went in as well.  I had some statice and Mexican torch flowers that added to the bright colors my daughter desires for her fall wedding.  To round out the selection, I tucked in some previously cut and dried hare's tail grass.  Michelle did not like this from the seed catalog description, but I ordered it any way.  When she saw them hanging in the basement, she had to agree that they were going to be sweet additions.  The women in the flower shop were most intrigued by the grass of all the things I brought.

I get to see how things all came together tomorrow morning when we pick them all up.  I can hardly wait!