One of the questions I get asked the most from SouthernPlate.com is “Where did you get your canisters? I love them!”. Well thank you so much,I’m tickled to death that you like them as much as me! I’ve never been able to tell folks where they could get their own until today though, because I actually made those up myself. You see, my old Tom’s Jar was the inspiration for my canister set a couple of years ago when I designed the lettering and had my father in law cut them out in his vinyl shop. A quick coat of paint to the lids and my canister set was born!

The good news is that as of today, you can make your own set just like I did because I am now offering the Southern Plate Canister Decal Set in the new online Southern Plate store! Quantities are limited and once they sell out they won’t be for sale again until we restock so pick up your set today and then follow along this tutorial to see exactly how I made mine.

Update: In the first hour of the store being opened we sold over half our stock of the decal sets. If they are sold out when you go to the store please know that we’re working on making more now. We hope to have more in stock by week’s end so check back if we’re sold out. Thank you!

To start with you will need clean glass canisters of your choice. You will also need tape and a canister decal set from the Southern Plate Store.

These canisters were purchased at Wal Mart and Target. Old Time Pottery and many other stores that carry kitchen merchandise will have glass canisters similar to these or that will work just as well.

Lay out your labels and decide which ones you are going to use.

Place a small piece of tape, sticking side facing up, on the far left end of one of your words.

You should be holding the word so that it reads properly when facing you, not backwards.

Align your word on the front of your canister and make sure you have it where you want it,

then stick it down using the tape on the end.

Lift the untaped end and gently peel the backing off.

like this.

Holding it taut to keep your letters straight, gently begin pressing it down onto your canister as shown in the next photo…

As you press down, run your finger over each letter when it makes contact with the canister to ensure it goes on smoothly and with no bubbles.

like this.

Once you have your entire word onto the canister, go over it again with your fingers,

pressing and smoothing down each line of each letter.

Gently peel back the paper to reveal your lettering.

And there ya go!

*These are not dishwasher safe. To wash your canisters please wash the inside only in the sink and gently wipe off the outside as needed.

Here is a set all ready to go with stainless steel lids (I’m about to show you how I painted mine).

and here is a cookie jar in a different type of canister that I picked up.

Notice the similarity to my antique Tom’s jar. This is what I first modeled my canister set after when I designed the letters and made them a couple of years ago. This jar was purchased at Wal Mart and is just about identical to the Tom’s design. I just love it, but really, any glass jar would work just as well.

Wanna paint your lids like I did? Lets get to it!

First, you’ll need to take apart each lid as pictured both above and below..

The paint I use on mine is Rust-Oleum Gloss Protective Enamel.

The color I get is called “Sunrise Red”.

NOTE: Due to the design of my canisters, none of my painted surfaces will be touching food ingredients. Please be careful that if you are painting a surface that will be touching food or ingredients, your paint is food safe.

On a warm sunny day, lay out all of your parts on cardboard in your yard somewhere.

• You’ll need to apply at least two coats of paint. The first coat should be extremely light. (You’ll probably still see some of the original color showing through.) Spraying too much on the first coat will cause bubbles to form on the lids. Make sure you are far enough away that the wind will not blow any paint overspray onto something you don’t want painted.

Spray your paint in nice even coats.

Make sure you do this on a warm, sunny day for best results and as I said be careful of the wind and overspray or there is no telling what you’ll end up getting red paint on.

This is a set with bright red lids all freshly done.

The “Coffee” canister isn’t in this photo but the decal for it is included in the set along with “Cookies”.

Please note: The canisters are not included in the kit you will purchase. Decals only are included. You will need to purchase glass canisters of your choice as well as paint if you choose to paint them.

This is what my lid looks like after a little over two years of heavy use.

I love how this just adds to the antique look of the jars. Ricky keeps wanting to re pain them but I won’t let him!

To purchase my canister decal kit, visit the Southern Plate Store.

Note: Once kits sell out they will not be for sale again until we have had a chance to restock.

See below for photos of more fun things available in the store!

Click here to visit the store

An assortment of Southern Plate aprons

Car (or fridge) magnet

Car (or fridge) magnet

Vinyl decal

Southern Plate Canister Decal Set

This giveaway is now closed but please enjoy the post!

This post is proudly sponsored by the Nestle Family Holiday Exchange. Read to the end for details on how to enter a series of valuable giveaways!

Congratulations to Carol Driver for winning this giveaway and thank you for entering!

One of the greatest things you can do for your family is to pass down your recipes. Those of you who have my cookbook and have read page 113 know why I feel so strongly about this. Folks often ask me how they get started compiling a family cookbook. Unsure of where to begin, how much work is involved, and possible expense, people tend to feel overwhelmed. Today I’m going to show you how simple, inexpensive, and rewarding compiling your family’s recipes into a cookbook can be and just in time for Christmas gift giving!

Putting together a cookbook for your family can be very inexpensive, but is sure to be a priceless heirloom that will be treasured for generations. Are you a Mama with grown kids? Why not type up all of those recipes they are always calling and asking about and put them together to hand out on Christmas morning. You can also make it a group project by sending out an email requesting everyone’s favorite recipes and have them send them to you already typed up to cut down on work.

I have made several family cookbooks over the years and today I’m going to show you a few of the ones I’ve made and give you suggestions of things I feel help to make your book even more of an heirloom.

One of the least expensive cookbooks to put together is simply one in a three ring binder. You can print off the pages at home, punch holes and place them in. A lot of three ring binders have a clear insert page in the front where you can even put in a title page. This is the very first kind I did, almost sixteen years ago.

You can also photocopy your handwritten recipes and simply punch holes in those and place them in as well. It may seem less “professional” to do that now, but your great, great grandchildren sure would cherish a recipe written in your hand!

The price of making this book will be a dollar or two for the binder and

approximately five cents per copy,

making your costs just a few dollars per cookbook!

From there, I moved up a bit. This is a cookbook I made mostly at home. I printed out the cover on cardstock and laminated it myself, then printed all of the pages on my printer and had copies made at an office supply store. Once I put all of the books together I took them back to the supply store and had them bind them with a plastic spiral binding. At the time it cost me around $1.50 per book to have them drilled and bound this way. This was a very economical book to put together and made a nice Christmas gift. The cover showcased my parents wedding picture.

This one cost me about seven dollars a copy to make.

This is my second family cookbook. I spent over a year compiling recipes from both my side and my husband’s side of the family. There are well over 500 recipes in this one. I took the entire book on a disk to an office supply store and had them print it all and print the cover on green cardstock. In lieu of laminating the cover, there is a clear plastic sheet that goes over it (this saved me some money). This one was very expensive but that is mostly due to the size of it.

The funny thing is that I worked on it for the better part of a year to give as Christmas gifts and then once I got done it was so big that I couldn’t afford to have them printed for everyone! We were young and had a two year old and spending almost twenty dollars on every member of the family was just impossible. When everyone saw the completed book though, they were happy to pay to have theirs printed and my gift ended up being the work I put into it.

This cookbook cost about $16.00 per copy to print, but that is mostly due to the size of the cookbook.

Several years went by and I started SouthernPlate.com. From there I went with a professionally self published book. I contacted several printing companies for quotes and went with the least expensive, but this is still the most expensive option and I don’t recommend it unless you are going to be ordering 500 or more books.

I ordered these and used to sell them on SouthernPlate.com. I no longer sell them and they are out of print but I’ve managed to hang on to a few copies to give my kids when they grow up. Its a lot of work self publishing and fulfilling orders. My poor Mama used to mail these for me and she’d go to the post office five times a week just to mail them off. We’re happy to have Amazon.com and bookstores do that part of the job now

The cookbook you can buy is available in stores is still every bit the family cookbook and more. I poured my heart into it and shared my family’s most treasured recipes. Miss Paula Deen read it and said “The recipes in Southern Plate made my mouth water!” I hope you enjoy it.

*As I write this it is $14.48 on Amazon.com but their prices go up pretty rapidly so it may change by the time you read this.

Now that you know some of the cookbook options,

lets talk about what to put in it…

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No matter which cookbook format you go with, there are some important

features you may want to add in order to give it the most sentimental value.

Below are some important things you can include in your books to make them even more special for the whole family.

Dedication- A Dedication is very important to any book. This can be simply a “This book is dedicated to..” statement or it can feature a photograph of a loved one along with a dedication. Remember, this is your book and there are no steadfast rules here so do what feels right to you.

(I’m blurring out some details in this page and the next several others so if they look funny that is why)

Special thanks - this can go at the beginning or end of the book and is a wonderful place to include everyone who contributed recipes. If you are doing this for your family and notice that just about everyone but a few contributed recipes, go ahead and include the names of everyone just to make sure everyone feels the love.

To include folks who didn’t contribute, you can always say “Thank you for your contributions and for being such a wonderful part of our wonderful family” or some such.

Family Anniversaries - Start with the mee maws and pee paws and include as many of the married folks as possible. Include full names, dates of marriage, and location of marriage if possible.

Birthdays - this one is self explanatory and will make everyone’s life so much easier!

Biographies- a short biography of each family member such as “John Smith- born January 28, 1942 in Egypt, Texas to Bill and Jill Smith. He graduated from Podunk High School in Whooha, Alabama and received a B.S. from John T. Importance University”

Special Notes: If you have any baking tips from Grandma, list them in a special section. Better yet, ask family members to contribute to a collection of tips and hints.

Autograph page- This may seem something a bit o the silly side but just think of all of your ancestors and how much it would mean to you to be able to have their signature on something. Why not make a special page or two for folks to sign in your cookbook, yearbook style? They can sign their name and put special wishes or sentiments.

If you are someone who shows your love through your cooking, there is nothing that could possibly be a greater treasure to those you love than a compilation of your recipes, your legacy to them. Taking the time to put them together in a book can be inexpensive and fuss free. Everything else beneath the tree will pale in comparison .

And now for the big news! The Southern Plate Family has been chosen to take part in the Nestle Family Holiday Exchange!

We’ll be taking part over a series of five posts (including this one) where I’ll be posting about food, recipes, traditions, crafts, holiday entertaining and more. You’re the biggest part of this, though, so I want you to be sure and join in the discussion in the comments for each post where one comment will be chosen at random to win a prize pack.

There are five great prize packs in all and four of them include valuable gift cards along with other prizes.

Here is today’s prize pack:

Family Holiday Movie Night Package Featuring:

“A Christmas Story” Collector’s Edition DVD

3-Flavor Pack of Ovaltine

Raisinets (my favorite theatre treat!)

Family Size Dinner from Stouffer’s

Dreyer’s/Edy’s Ice Cream Cups!

For a great dessert idea you can make with the kids, visit Nestle’s Holiday Family site and check out Quick Brownie Bites Sundaes!

This contest closes midnight on Wednesday, December 5th. I’ll notify the winner by email and announce them on this post on Thursday, December 6th.

To enter, leave a comment joining in today’s discussion.

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Have any of those been passed down for generations?

How about ideas for creating new traditions?

You don’t have to answer each question, just grab one and go with it! I want to hear from you!

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Disclaimer: I have partnered with Nestle Family to be a part of this Holiday Exchange series of blog posts. I have not been paid for a positive opinion and all opinions expressed within this post are my own.

I am a hardcore couponer.* My kids are even in on it. Whenever we go to the grocery store together they both want to know ahead of time “Do we get any coupons?”. I usually pick out a coupon I had planned on using (for a kid friendly item to make it more fun) and give one to each of them. Their job then is to find the item or items in the grocery store and put them in the buggy. They also get to put them on the belt and hand over their coupons when time comes to pay. Then we talk about how much money they saved that day by using them and I’ll usually go through a drive through for some sort of treat and explain to them how we got that “free” with the money we saved.

Consequently, Katy’s favorite thing to do is get my coupons out of the printer whenever I print them off from websites and such. As soon as she hears that printer going she hollers out “Ma! Can I get the coupons out for you?” and here she’ll come a running with pieces of paper, proud as a peacock. Hint: You can print out coupons directly from SouthernPlate.com by using the Coupons widget about middle ways down in the right sidebar!

One of the things that drives me half mad is the price of laundry detergent. This is one item which is absolutely necessary in your household but so seldom goes on sale. To make matters worse, Katy has had some sensitivity issues to detergent in the past (she broke out in hives when I tried out a lavender scented one and on one other occasion when I tried another detergent) so I am limited to which ones I can purchase.

A while back, I came across a Tipnut.com post on homemade laundry detergent. Now my initial thought was not to replace our laundry detergent but rather to simply know how to make my own in a pinch, if I ever had the need. I just love being able to do things like this on my own, must have been all those episodes of MacGyver when I was younger. I was pretty surprised to find that not only did it clean better than the high dollar brands but it also softened our clothes (I no longer use fabric softener) and made everything even smell fresher than the brand I had been using.

It has been requested by all members of my household (including the youngest, who thinks grating soap is just the coolest thing ever) that I only use this detergent from now on. We’ve been using it for a few months now and I’m totally won over. Of course, they love it for the smell and feel of our clothes, I love it for how great it works and the fact that it only costs me about eight cents per load of laundry now!

In my mind, the commercial versions can’t come close to this.

Tipnut has an extensive list of laundry detergent recipes on her site, including several for liquid detergent. She also has a great FAQ section just for laundry detergent questions! I considered the liquid detergent recipes for all of thirty seconds and went straight with the powder because it suits my commitment to keep things as low maintenance and simple as possible.

This is only my second batch that I’ve made up. It seemed to last forever so this last time I actually measured out how many loads were in each batch so I could give you an accurate figure. No wonder it lasted forever, I had made enough for 160 loads!

Today I’m bringing you the recipe I use which I found on Tipnut.com. After viewing this tutorial, hop on over there and check out her other recipes for detergent to find the one that works best for you. This one is the hands down winner at my house!

You’ll need:

• Laundry Soap (Fels Naptha or Zote are the ones I have used. You can also use: Sunlight Bar Soap, Kirk’s Hardwater Castile, or even Ivory)
• Arm and Hammer Super Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)
• Borax

Note: You’re not likely to find all of these things in one store. I usually have to make trips to at least two different stores to get them. One store will have the Borax but put it beside a huge box of Baking Soda instead of washing soda and then another will have the soap. Just have fun shopping around for what you like but be sure you remember where you got everything! I am going to show you a recipe for detergent to make about eighty loads worth but I recommend you get four bars of soap and go ahead and make 160 loads worth because there is enough Borax and Washing Soda in one box to do that much. This will give you the absolute best savings!

The only real work involved is grating your soap. I use a cheese grater for this. I really want to use my food processor but I’m worried about hard soap damaging or dulling my blades so cheese grater it is!

Get your soap, a dishpan or large bowl, and grater and go find something good on TV.

If you have access to one of the first few seasons of Mcleod’s Daughter’s, that’d be my pick.

*I get about three cups of soap shavings from each bar. Measurements will vary according to the size of your bar soap and how finely it is ground.

We’re grating this kind of fine so it melts easier in the water.

If you like, you can run the shavings through the food processor when you are done to make it finer but this works just fine for me.

Measure out your soap grounds in a large mixing bowl. This is where the recipe gets easy.

However many cups of soap shavings you have, half that to know the number of cups of Washing Soda and Borax to put in.

So for six cups of soap shavings, use three cups of borax and three cups of washing soda!

Measure out Washing Soda

And borax..

Stir all of that up!

You’ll have to stir a bit each time you scoop some out to get a good ratio of soap shavings to powder but that’s no big deal.

I store mine in a little flip top container and leave an 1/8th of a cup measuring cup in there to measure it out. Can you believe this only takes two tablespoons per load? Seriously! I put this to the test, too. I’ve figure out that two tablespoons is pretty close to 1/8th of a cup so that is the measurement I use now.

The main difference you will notice between this and store bought detergents is that this detergent doesn’t suds up as commercial ones do. Don’t let that deter you! Once you pull out your first load of clean, fresh smelling, naturally soft and fluffy laundry, that only cost YOU eight cents to clean, you’ll be hooked.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

*This was based off of Tipnut.com’s recipe #4, I just altered the amounts

• 4 Bars Laundry Soap (to yield 12 cups of soap shavings)
• 6 Cups Borax (this is roughly one box)
  
• 6 Cups Washing powders (this is roughly one box)

Grate soap using cheese grater. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and stir well. Place in sealed container and measure out two tablespoons for each load.

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Smaller Batch Recipe

• 2 Cups Laundry Soap Shavings (you can get this easily from one bar)
• 1 Cup Borax
• 1 Cup Washing Soda

*Follow Instructions For Above Recipe

Soaps you can use: Fels Naptha, Zote, Sunlight Bar Soap, Kirk’s Hardwater Castile, or Ivory

*For great coupon strategies and advice, visit www.southernsavers.com.

“You can complain because the roses have thorns, or you can

rejoice because the thorns have roses.”

To submit your positive or uplifting quote, please click here.