Pump up the jam!

We have a full on grape vine that covers the entire fence on one side of our yard.  We have always talked about harvesting these grapes for more than to just snack on every once in awhile.  We looked into making our own wine, and this was way too complex!  So, we settled on using them to make grape jelly.  We are novices, after all.  

The grapes were ripe for the pickin' back in October.  We collected the goodies, washed them in the sink, put them in zip locks and stored them in the freezer.  Flash forward to december, and we were ready to make our jelly!

We soaked the grapes in the sink to defrost them.  Then the hard part:  picking all the grapes and making sure we did not leave any stems behind.  Once that was done, we rinsed all the grapes one more time.

Meanwhile, we boiled the jars and lids to sanitize.

The only ingredients was our grapes, sugar and pectin.  We just followed the instructions on the pectin.

Boiled the grapes and strained the juice.

Stirred in the sugar and pectin then poured into our jars!  Our harvested yielded 10 jars of Venice Backyard Grape Jelly!

Once all the jars were filled, we boiled them again so the lids would pop and seal.  

The jelly wasn't complete until we put the final touch on them.  Cute stickers and a bow!  It turned out delicious!   New tradition!