Mason Jar – Zen Aroma – Legacy Website

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Kirsty Nielsen

Mother’s Day Candied Nuts

(Nuts in a Mason Jar!)

My Mum doesn’t like us spending money on her. Especially for Mother’s Day. But it’s always nice to do something, even if it’s something small. It’s the thought that counts after all.

Mum loves nuts; who doesn’t right!? So I figured it would be nice to give her something that doesn’t cost a lot, but that shows I went to a little effort. Plus hand making gifts has to score brownie points over my other two sisters (the sibling rivalry never seems to diminish even now we’re all in our 30’s!)

Our mason jars are a great container to store these delicious nuts, and they make a nice looking gift too.

Ingredients:

500 grams of mixed nuts – I used cashew, peanut, almond, walnut and pecan
25 grams butter
1Tbsp honey
1Tbsp sugar
1/4tsp cinnamon
1/4tsp salt

Step One:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Add all your nuts to a greaseproof tray.

Step Two:

Add the butter and honey to a pan and cook on a medium heat until fully melted.

Step Three:

Pour the buttery honey over the nuts and toss until all the nuts are covered.

Step Four:

Bake the nuts in the oven for 10 – 15 minutes or until the nuts have browned, stirring every 2 – 3 minutes. You’ll want to keep a fairly close eye on the oven as the nuts can burn in an instant!

Step Five:

Remove nuts from the oven and stir making sure the nuts don’t stick together. Once they’ve cooled slightly sprinkle over the salt, sugar and cinnamon. You can add more or less depending on your personal preference. Put the try of nuts in the freezer, this helps them keep them loose instead of sticking together.

Once the nuts have completely cooled scoop them into your jar and enjoy!

This recipe makes enough to fill one and a half 8oz mason jars which means Mum gets the mason jar and I get all the leftovers… purely for quality control purposes of course!

2-candied-nuts — Add some pretty ribbon to the jar and they’re ready to send!

P.S – Mum received these today, and when she called to thank me she asked if I had actually made them myself! She thought I’d just repackaged some bought nuts and tried to pass them off as home made – the cheek of it! She tried a few when she first opened the jar and said there definitely wouldn’t be any left by Mother’s Day! So that’s a big tick for success!

Dad’s complaining now that he didn’t get to try any before I sent them away so I’m sure I’ll be making more again… looks like I’ve got Father’s Day already sorted.

Posted on May 4, 2015 by Kirsty Nielsen

Mason Jar Ribbon Holder

For my first project I thought I’d tackle something simple, yet still useful.

I have loads of ribbons, they’re all dumped in a basket just waiting to tangle with each other. With my nifty mason jar ribbon holder they’re now safely stored in a tangle free zone.

My inspiration came from a post I found on ‘A Casarella

My finished product definitely doesn’t look as cute, or tidy as hers, and I don’t have one of those fancy flower cut out lids, but it does the trick!

What you’ll need:

Mason Jar
130mm bolt with washer and nut

Tools & Equipment:

Hammer
Nail
Power drill & various drill bits
Metal file

Step One:

Take a non permanent marker and draw four lines crossing each other to establish where to drill the centre and ribbon holes.

Step Two:

Take your hammer and nail and gently tap the nail until it pierces the lid. Be very gentle as it doesn’t take much to get through the thin metal lid.

Step Three:

Use a small drill bit to drill a pilot hole through each of the nail holes, I used a 4 size drill bit for this step – this will make it much easier for the big drill bit to cut through the metal without warping the lid. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this step!

Step Four:

Use the larger drill bit to drill the full size holes, I used a 8.5 size drill bit for this step. After drilling you may have some sharp edges – I did and I found out the hard way how sharp they actually are! Use a round metal file to get rid of these.

Step Five:

Thread your spools of ribbon onto the bolt and feed the end of the ribbon through one of the holes in the lid. Once you have all your ribbon on the bolt, slide the bolt through the centre hole in the lid and secure with a washer and nut. Viola, you’re done!

I’m wondering if there might be a problem with the ribbons getting caught up with each other, but so far so good! It’s not the prettiest thing but you could definitely decorate the jar to jazz it up a bit if you felt like it.

I’ll be working on my next project this weekend, just in time for Mother’s Day…. stay tuned!

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Kirsty Nielsen

Mason Jar May

The humble mason jar has been on a serious come-back for a while now. What used to be solely reserved for people like my Granddad, and his case loads of preserved peaches, (literally case loads! I now have an aversion to tinned peaches because of the sheer amount of preserved peaches we used to have to eat in my childhood!), are now considered a fashionable.

I find myself being served cold drinks in mason jars virtually everywhere I go. You can’t go for five minutes browsing Pinterest without being bombarded with ideas on how to use mason jars in every which way other than what they’re originally designed for. So I thought I’d jump on that bandwagon!

The month of May has officially been dubbed “Mason Jar May”

For the next four weeks I’m going to set about attempting four different projects using various styles of mason jars. I stress the word attempting, because like any crafter will know grand ideas sometimes don’t come out as awesome “in the flesh” as they do in your head.

Stay tuned for my first project Mason Jar Ribbon Holder