Earlier this week, John came home from work carrying 3 GALLONS OF FRESH BLACKBERRIES!!!

Clearly, this man knows the way to my heart! We'd recently run out of all our homemade jThus, it was a jelly famine around here. So, these berries were far better than if he'd come home bearing flowers or jewelry (he knows I'm not a big fan of either of those, anyway).

And, just when I thought things couldn't get better, he suggested a jelly-making party once we'd put the kids to bed! What could be better than jelly-making with my best friend over a little wine and lot of conversation?

(Girl 2 grabbed my phone on her way to bed and snapped the above pic because she thought we looked funny in our aprons. :)

We decided to try out both jam and jelly. Here, the juice is straining out of a butter muslin cloth in preparation for jelly-making.

Since this was John's first time with making jelly, he wanted me to give directions and walk him through each step -- so I got to essentially teach him as we went. Seriously, I was in heaven in my hot, sweaty kitchen!

This ought to last us awhile!