It's Been a While

It's been some time since I last posted. A few things have happened. One of my nieces recently gave birth to her third child - a boy. She is really outnumbered now since she is married to a wonderful man, and they have two boys already. I kind of wonder if she's trying to have a girl but the universe says NO! LOL! I think a nephew and his wife are due to have another child too, based on something another niece said on Snapchat, and it sounds like it will be another girl. My sister, at 56, decided she wanted to retire.

I've mentioned it before in a previous post, but my church will be having their annual craft fair coming up on May 3. I decided to participate, and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with my choice of craft this year. I took a lot of time to try and figure out exactly how much of my ingredients I'd need and somehow, I came up short of a couple things. I tried really hard to get everything ready before assembling anything. In my defense, I was never really great with math, but I really thought I had it right. Is the universe trying to tell me I'm overdoing it? Maybe.

Last year, I decided to do jams, jellies, and salsas. Being in New Mexico, I thought the salsas would go over well. They didn't. I actually did the best business with the jams and jellies! I had samples of everything, which helped a lot, but man, in a place where spiciness rules, I was really surprised about the salsas.

This year, I decided to do something different. I asked and talked it over with a lot of people and everyone thinks it's a great idea. We shall see. Anyway, I'm doing Recipes in a Jar. Yes, it does sound odd, but it is essentially the dry ingredients for a recipe in a jar and all that is needed to make the recipe is to provide the other needed (wet) ingredients. I am also making a few herbal tea blends. I have them in individual tea bags and have put a total of 18 in a quart sized jar. Believe it or not, 18 bags just BARELY fit in the jar! I have labels on EVERYTHING to say what the recipe is along with a tag that says what is needed and how to make the recipe. I have teas, baked goods (cookies, muffins, and a couple cake mixes), soups, and sides. Roughly 23 recipes in total, which figures out to about 120+ jars as a whole. I am debating on making the chai tea and chocolate chai latte, because I was having trouble finding one ingredient (instant unsweet tea), but I did manage to find some on Amazon. So, I may go ahead and do those mixes. I might have extra tea ingredients so there is a chance I will make one or two extra tea blends. Although, I may not be able to make as much as I've done for the other blends, but we shall see.

A lot of the recipes I'm using are ones I've found over the past 20-25 years online. I've created a binder with all the recipes I've found. In the past, I've sent a care package to one of my nephews when he was in college with some soup mixes and drink mixes. I gave some drink mixes and spice mixes with Christmas gifts. I recently purchased a couple herbal tea books off of amazon and am making a couple mixes for the craft fair. Then I started looking at some recipes I've made many many times and adapted a few to be recipes in a jar. I decided to adapt a carrot cake recipe (one of my dad's favorite cakes), chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, and a chewy oatmeal cookie recipe. Fingers crossed, it works out!

The main thing I'm debating about is price. My original plan was to sell each jar for $5.00. But some the recipes (apple cider spice mix and New Orleans gumbo mix) fit better in smaller jars. I think it's because those recipes are a lot of spices mixed together so they don't take up as much room as the soups or baked goods recipes. I'm debating on whether I want to charge $5 for them or go down to $3 or $4. I'm hoping to sell everything, which would not only cover the cost of materials but give me a profit to boot. Honestly, I would love to make my money back, if nothing else. But I will have to ask for advice about the prices for the spice mixes. I know I tend to overthink things, but this is really something I have to get figured out before the craft fair (probably giving myself multiple headaches in the meantime). Once I have everything done (it's going to be a LOT), I guess I'll have a better idea of what to do.

I am sure I'll have it all done in time. I work on a recipe or two almost every day, sometimes making my desired number of jars per recipe and sometimes not. I'm planning out my signs and what else I'd need to bring with me to the fair. I'm hoping this year to get an indoor spot, and if not, at least a better outdoor spot than last year. We'll see!

After the craft fair, I need to start planning on my decorations for Vacation Bible School coming in June. But that's a story for later.

God Bless!