Hello! Ever since I saw, bought and received the Papertrey Strawberry Patch and SP Sentiments stamp sets, I've had this idea floating around in my head of making up baskets of strawberry goodies for my neighbors. You've got to justify purchasing the stamps, right? So first thing I did was to go pick strawberries at our local strawberry picking farm. You know when you get out there in the strawberry patch with your containers and you have NO IDEA how many pounds of strawberries you've picked? Well, turns out, I picked alot! Those strawberries plus ALOT of sugar and sure jell, yielded 48 jars of strawberry jam. Then I got the brilliant idea to bake fresh bread to put in the baskets. I'm on the bread baking team at church. We bake bread (crescent rolls) to put in the guest's welcome bag at church. Well, after 24 cups of flour, TONS of butter, some yeast, some water (did I say TONS of butter?), that yielded 13 dozen rolls!
Oh, and I forgot to tell you that a few weeks ago I decided to make a nice bread cloth to go in the baskets too. I have an embroidery machine and decided to try my hand at digitizing the large bunch of strawberries from the Strawberry Patch stamp set. I stamped the design, scanned it in my computer, then fed it into my embroidery software, and digitized the design. I embroidered 9 of these onto linen bread cloths. Then, I purchased red and white material from Joann's and make coordinating cloths. (I know, I'm an over-achiever!) Here's how the ensemble turned out.
The embroidery of the strawberry patch bunch of strawberries on the linen cloth.
The individual basket of goodies.
The freshly baked bread and label (Matt Stack 1, Everyday Treats).
The strawberry jam and label - Matt Stack 2, Friendship Jar, Strawberry Patch.
Several of the baskets for my neighbors.
Glad that's all done. I delivered them today and all were very grateful. And I have LOTS of jam and rolls stocked up for guests and hostesses for the future. Yeah Strawberry Patch!!!!
