Have You Seen What Ball® Has in Store This Year? (+ a giveaway)

Gardeners have been busy canning and preserving for the last few months and it's not over yet. Just this week, I pulled my beets for pickling, as I do each summer. It's one of our very favorite goodies from the garden. I've also got some Mexican gherkin cucumbers (they look like miniature watermelons!) that I'll be pickling for the first time this year.

Since 2010, Ball® has been celebrating the bounty of the garden with their annual Can-It-Forward day. Held in August, its intent is to help people with making the most of their garden produce. The Can-It-Forward pages have all kinds of wonderful tips and activities, including downloadable and printable labels for your jars.

Though we've never preserved the majority of what we grow (we eat it and share it with neighbors and family), when we do, Ball jars are what we do it in. We also use Ball® jars for our maple syrup we make in late winter.

This year, Ball® sent me some of their products to use and I was of course delighted to get the latest and final edition of the American Heritage Collection Series of jars, commemorating their 100th anniversary.  1913 saw the launch of the first true “Perfect Mason” jar followed in 1914 by the “PERFECTION,” then finally by “IMPROVED” in 1915. This year's jars are purple and follow the previous years' green and blue.

Photo by Jenna DeCraene

Also new this year are the Sip & Straw lids, which are pure genius. How many of us have used Ball® jars as drinking glasses? The Sip & Straw lids take it to another level and are just plain fun, for both kids and adults.

You just use regular rings (not included) and screw them over the lids, which do include sturdy reusable straws. They come in blue, red, or purple. You can use them on your regular Ball® jars or you can get jars with handles too.

Photo by Jenna DeCraene

I also received a copy of Ball's handy dandy Blue Book Guide to Preserving. It not only tells you how to do it, it also has over 500 recipes. This 37th edition, which is new this year, includes 75 new recipes.








Want some pretty purple jars of your very own?

If you've never used Ball® jars and for those of you who already do, here's a chance to win a set of six of this year's purple American Heritage Collection jars:

Just leave a comment on this blog post, telling me how you'll use the jars if you win (What will you can? Or will you use them for crafts?), as well as filling out the Rafflecopter form. You'll see bonus entry opportunities when you fill out the form, with a possible total of eight entries:

a Rafflecopter giveaway
The giveaway entry period will run through midnight EDT, Sunday, October 4, 2015. A winner will be randomly chosen by Rafflecopter and notified via email. Good luck!


If you've never checked out all the valuable information on their website, you're in for a treat. Ball® knows canning!

UPDATE: Congratulations to Julie Thompson Adolph! Rafflecopter chose you as the winner! Thank you to all who entered, and happy canning!

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I received products from Ball®/Jarden Brands for the purpose of review. No other compensation has been given to me and all opinions expressed here are my own. I am an Amazon Affiliate and this blog post may contain affiliate links to Amazon.com.