I have the cutest little pantry in my kitchen. It is about 4.5 feet tall and has a little glass door and a nice wide ledge. Ever since I moved here, I have been wanting some fabulous and large glass canisters to put on top. I was so happy a few weeks ago, when I found these beautiful 2.5 gallon canisters at Amazon:

My birthday just happened to be this week, and I asked for three of these puppies (I put a few more on my wedding registry because I love them so much. I want to do one for Rice and one for Bread Flour).

As soon as I got them, I filled them up with flour, sugar, and rolled oats. But what I really couldn’t wait to do, was to make labels for them! Here they are looking adorable on my pantry:

The glass on these jars is a little wavy and imperfect, and I love the dark lids – they definitely have an antique feel. So I made some cute distressed labels (available for download at the end of this post). I printed and cut them out and they were super cute…

… but I really wanted them to have an older feel than just flat printed paper. So I pulled out some supplies:

> a moist/wet paper towel

> distressing ink – Tim Holtz Antique Linen & vintage photo

> emry board – fine sand paper will do

> A flat clean work surface that can get wet/messy.

I printed my labels on regular bond paper. I recommend testing your distressing process on some test paper before going at the printed items. Also if you get water on an inkjet print, it will run, so if you want to get really down and dirty, print your labels with a laser printer. I didn’t worry about the ink running on the lighter parts of the design, but I did try and keep the paper away from the letters since they are so dark.

Step 1: Crinkle your labels. I recommend bigger, deeper folds and creases. As long as the paper is dry, you can be pretty rough with it. I bent and tore and creased quite a bit so that the ink would have a lot of fun detail to hold onto:

Step 2: Wet your labels. I used a wet paper towel to dab water around the edges. You definitely want the paper soaked, but not so much that it tears or bleeds into the center. You have to work fast at this point because it needs to be pretty wet for the next step. You may want to do step 2 & step 3 to one side at a time to keep your paper from drying too fast.

Step 3: Once you have a wet edge, go ahead and use the lighter ink on the wet parts. The ink should bleed as soon as it hits the water and create a “dying” effect as opposed to an “inking” effect. This will make it look aged and not just inked. After a little light inking, I applied just a tiny bit of dark inking on some of the edges:

At this point your paper will be pretty wet and your wrinkles will have disappeared, but they will come back. Just finish each label and set them aside to dry. I let mine dry about 30 minutes. Here is how they looked after I let them sit for a bit:

I love how aged they look and how stiff they feel after drying. I will definitely use this technique on more projects in the future.

If I had printed them on a laser printer, I would have made the entire label more “dyed” looking, but I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

Attaching the labels was really easy, I used a large glue-dot in each corner. I don’t recommend this if you have a lot of people accessing your canisters, but I know its enough adhesive for my uses with the upside being that I can change them out pretty easy when I get bored of the look. You could use spray adhesive or run them through a larger xyron after they have dryed completely. If you printed on a laser printer, I imagine you could use Mod Podge, just test it on the glass first to see if it drys clear enough.

Here is a before & after shot. I really should have taken a before shot when the pantry was covered in half-empty flour and sugar bags, paper plates & food boxes.

I love how they look, how big the labels are, and just the overall vintage styling with the large black lids + the aged labels. So yummy.

You can really see the variety in the glass from this photo. I couldn’t be happier with how they turned out!

As promised, here is the label file. I did have to make it just a smidge smaller than the one I used in order to fit all the labels on one 8.5×11.

Download this label file and enjoy (for personal use only ). Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own labels. I would love a comment if you do download!

Each of these files are a 8.5″x11″ PDF. Use Acrobat Reader to open the file and print as many as you like! Happy project-ing!

If you are another blog or crafting site and would like to link this project to your site, please contact me. Thanks!

xoxo Jen Allyson

 
 Today I got a bread maker! That definitely calls for a blog post. I wasn’t really in the market for a bread maker. I did make rolls the other day and was thinking how nice it would be to make all my own bread, but since my mother always made her bread the hard way, I didn’t really think about the possibility of getting a bread maker to do the task for me. 

However, all this changed while I was wasting time on the Two Peas in a Bucket message boards. A fellow pea mentioned that she was looking for a bread maker and was hoping for some recommendations and general advice. Well this got my wheels turning and I thought, gee it would be nice to have a bread maker, but they are so expensive, maybe one day. And then as more people posted to the thread, many ladies were telling the original poster to get hers second hand either from goodwill or craigslist. Of course since I had my very own internet handy, I went right over to craigslist to check things out. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I promptly found a beautiful stainless steel Cuisinart bread machine for sale!

It was listed as only used twice, purchased for $130 and sellnig for $50. Not too shabby, I offered $40, cause well it is craigslist and you’re supposed to haggle a bit. The guy still had it and was home all day. So Mr. Project took care of the whole thing, correspondance, atm, money/product exchange at one shady apartment building in downtown San Francisco. The whole deal. A few hours later, I was a proud owner of a bread maker! Happy Valentine’s day to me. 

Of course I had to make bread immediately, so after a quick run to the grocery store to pick up a few key ingredients. I decided to start with classic cinnamon-raisin swirl bread. Yum-o!

The whole process was very quick – which I do believe is the point. I cleared off some counter space, grabbed the recipe and all the ingredients. The cinnamon swirl take a bit more effort since it has “Mix-Ins.” The first step on the recipe was to mix sugar, cinnamon, and a whole lot of raisins in a small bowl.

Once that was mixed, I put it aside and got down to business! Putting the remainder of the ingredients, very carefully in order and according to directions, into the bread maker’s bread pan. This was a basic white bread recipe, all the expected ingredients, sugar, salt, egg, butter, bread flour, yeast.

 Then I just let it do its thing. Since it was my first time with a bread maker, I watched for quite awhile and even gave it a name. Henceforth the Bread maker shall be referred to as “Gina the Bread Machine-a”. Or just Gina for short.  Once Gina was finished kneeding the bread, an alarm went off and it was time to add the raisin mixture. I pulled out the smoooooth dough and plopped it on my cleaned and floured counter and then rolled it out. After rolling it out, I spread the rasen mixture on like so:

Next, I rolled it up, yes this is just like cinnamon rolls, super easy.

Finally, I pinched all the edges – top and sides – and placed it ever-so-gently back in the bread maker for rising and baking.

I realize now that I probably should have put the bread in upside down — making the completely smooth underbelly face up instead of the pinched top, but It still looked yummy! After replacing the bread pan, I pressed start again (it had been paused). and then just sat back and let Gina do all the work. About 2.5 hours, I had this beautiful loaf of yummy, warm, and practically perfect raisin bread to show for!

YUM! it was seriously so good and a great late night snack for this super late night blogger. The moral of the story: craigslist is awesome.

I have a batch of ingredients in the  bread maker which has a timer on (so cool) to have a loaf of honey whole wheat bread all kneaded and baked by the time I wake up tomorrow. Yeah, I’m living the dream. Now I really have to find my running shoes.

Here is a menu planning form that I use when I’m planning out my menu for the week. The top half has a weekly calender with space for Breakfast, Lunch, & Dinner Menus. It also has space at the bottom to list all the ingredients that you need to get at the store. A pretty simple and straightforward menu planner that also looks great on your fridge or magnet board!

Download this file and enjoy (for personal use only). Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own file. I would love a comment if you do download!

I also have a slightly different version of the form that does not have the meals for each day broken up.

Download this file and enjoy (for personal use only). Please tell your friends to come visit the site and download their own file. I would love a comment if you do download!

Each of these files are a 8.5″x11″ PDF. Use Acrobat Reader to open the file and print as many as you like! Happy Menu Planning!!

If you are another blog or crafting site and would like to link this project to your site, please contact me. Thanks!