How to Clean a Peanut Butter Jar

Random blog post for me? Mayhaps. But I'll tell you what - I get most of my protein from peanut butter and this stuff is a big part of my daily routine. (I'm not a vegetarian, but meat is not my favorite thing to eat.) Between David and me, we probably consume one 16-oz jar of peanut butter every week - and that leaves us with a TON of used peanut butter jars.

Whether you need to clean out your peanut butter jars for recycling or for reusing, there's a way to do it that will leave your sponge much less... peanut buttery. Am I the only one who hates getting my sponge covered in wet, soapy peanut butter? Yuck.

Well have NO freakin' fear, y'all. I'm here to help you de-pee-bee (eh? eh?) your glass jars so you can use them for whatever your little heart desires. Massive disclaimer:  David is the one who taught me this trick! He's the most clever boy in the entire world. #DontArgue.

Step 1: Use your peanut butter. Like... all of it. Till the jar is as empty as it can be without you licking it clean. Because how would you get your tongue in there anyway? I mean, come on. If you could fit your tongue into every crevice of a peanut butter jar, there'd be no need for this instructional blog post to exist. You'd just clean it with your tongue. NEVER WASTE PEANUT BUTTER. EVER.

Step 2: Squirt one pump of dishwashing soap into your empty jar.

Step 3: Fill your jar halfway with hot water. You'll probably notice that the soap bubbles up and over the lid a bit. That's ok. Just make sure that it's only about half-full of water.

Step 4: This is the interesting step that you might not have thought of before... Place a small teaspoon into the jar and close the lid.

Step 5: SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE. SHAKE YOUR BOOTAAAY PEANUT BUTTER JAR. Like, seriously shake the shit out of that thing. Turn it into a dance or upper body exercise if you must.

The teaspoon acts like the tiny agitator ball inside a can of spray paint (or a nail polish bottle, if we're making it more relevant to my more typical blog posts). The spoon helps to mix up the soapy contents of the jar and scrapes along the sides of the container to remove the stubborn peanut butter remnants that normally you'd have to scrub off with your sponge. Your precious, precious sponge.

Once you've shaken your jar in every different direction (to get the spoon into as many crevices and crannies as possible), then you can either let it sit in the warm water for awhile and repeat, or unscrew your lid, dump out the contents and rinse it out.

I haven't even rinsed this one out yet and it's already pretty spotless:

So now that you have a clean glass jar - what are you going to do with it?

We usually move about once a year, on average, so I've learned a thing or two about packing up a house. One of the worst parts of a home to pack up is the kitchen. UGH. CITY. So many heavy/breaky things - none of which fit well into boxes. For that reason, we're notttt fans of buying a bunch of glassware from a store and then needing to "deal with it" come moving time. With all of the peanut butter we consume from glass jars, it occurred to us early on that we should just use these empty jars as our glassware. Not only does it save us from needing to purchase glasses, but we also a) don't have to worry when one of them breaks (since we basically acquire a new glass every week) and b) get to have handy screw-on lids for all of our glasses, in case we want to take our beverages to-go!

But that's not the only good reason to have a bunch of clean glass jars around. Here's another way I use glass jars AND holiday lights... which is especially relevant now that we're into February, hmm? Bet your husband/boyfriend is getting pretty close to fed up that your holiday decorations/Christmas trees are still up, eh ladies? Time to transition those lights from "holiday" lights to "BABE, let's leave these in our bedroom year-round!" lights:

Read all about that project here. It's a popular one!

Do you have the same issues that I do with soapy peanut butter sponges?

Do you have an exciting/creative use for your empty glass jars? I'd love to hear it!

Did you enter my nail polish giveaway? There are still a couple of days left!

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DIY: Re-Purposing Holiday Lights

I mentioned in my Thrift Shop Challenge blog that I was accumulating glass jars to use for a decor project in our apartment. It's finally time for me to post about the project!!

Here's the finished look, and then I'll go into the steps I took to put it together:

During the months of December and January, a yoga store on 4th Ave was displaying something similar to this along their entire storefront window, using dozens and dozens of mason jars of different sizes. I thought the idea was so pretty and since it only required two "ingredients" - glass jars and holiday lights - I could not pass up trying to recreate the design at home. We even had a perfect surface for the project, on top of a wooden dresser in our bedroom.

And so, several weeks back, I began holding onto our empty glass peanut butter and pasta sauce jars, as well as any other miscellaneous glass jars we emptied.

To make sure they were extra spotless, I took care to soak them and clean them well to remove all of the sticky residue left behind by their labels:

You can remove any additional stubborn sticky stuff from the jars by rubbing it off with a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol.

My neighbor even donated a few actual mason jars to the project! Once she gave me those, I finally felt like I had enough jars to set them all up with the holiday lights on the dresser top.

I took some time to arrange and re-arrange all of the jars until I found a configuration that I liked. That was probably the most difficult part of this entire project! After that I just began carefully stuffing each jar with the strand of lights, one jar at a time. Be careful not to break any of your tiny little light bulbs on the glass jars while you're doing this. You'll really get pissed if that happens.

I ended up leaving a couple of the smaller jars empty, which seemed to work out fine and still looks nice. I love the finished look!

This provides so much more light to our bedroom - it's wonderful! And, if you ask me, it's a pretty classy way to be an adult and use holiday lights in your decorating. When was the last time outside of a dorm room that you thought holiday lights were a good year-round decor decision?

Let me know if you like this or if you try it out as well :)

Update 12/2/13: Hey guys! These jarred holiday lights have been a staple in my home decor for almost a year now. That has given me time to notice that after a couple of hours the lights do become a bit warm inside of their jars. Just wanted everyone to have that on their radars so that you would know not to leave them turned on for too long. When they're warm enough you might notice a strange plasticky smell in the air, from the cords warming. Just sayin'! #BeSmart. #SafetyFirst. #MyDadIsAFirefighter #CanYouTell?

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{Linking up with All Things Christmas, That DIY Party, and Mason Jar Crafts}

Vancouver Holiday Lights & VanDusen Botanical Garden Festival of Lights

I go nuts for Christmas lights and have been a huge fan of seeking them out each holiday season for as long as I can remember. When I was much younger, my whole family used to pile into our minivan and go driving around Pittsfield in search of the best displays, which is something that I look forward to doing with my own kids someday. In the meantime, I'm totally content to check out local Christmas lights each winter, sans kids.

Vancouver was a lovely place to spend a holiday season, lights-wise. The city itself was full of businesses and homes/apartments alike that decked their halls and trees and front doors and balconies with plenty of holiday lights.

Walking over the Burrard Bridge towards Downtown, we could see Christmas lights on the balconies and Christmas trees inside the windows of all the high-rises...

.  all of the blues, purples and reds you see in that picture are different strands of lights  .

And here are a few more Downtown/neighborhood pics of lights from this past season:

.  watch a video of this ball of lights in action here  .

.  downtown, robson square, ice skating rink  .

.  christmas lights on palm trees  .

.  lights filling the front yard of the sheraton hall centre downtown  .

.  lights of hope in front of st. paul's hospital  .

Here is an exceptionally awesome display from within our own neighborhood. This one apartment was decked out like a tiny Las Vegas, and I had to swing past it with my camera one night to take this video:

David and I also attempted to visit Bright Nights, which is a park-wide display of lights that can be seen via a little train ride through Stanley Park (a park just northwest of Downtown Vancouver). However, we didn't realize that the train ride was mandatory in order to see the displays... we thought we'd have the option of being able to walk through the park to check it all out. Since I like walking and also hate waiting 3 hours for an open seat on a train to see some Christmas lights, we did not end up taking the train. Here's a bit of what can be seen of Bright Nights if you do not take the train...

.  the front .

.  the middle .

.  the back .

... Not a ton.

HOWEVER! All was not lost... because Vancouver has another Christmas lights extravaganza that requires no train whatsoever - the VanDusen Botanical Garden's Festival of Lights! David and I spent the early evening on New Year's Eve walking around the Garden for a couple of hours, taking in the lights. It was exactly what I needed!! Click on any of these photos to see a slideshow of larger versions:

And of course it wouldn't be Christmas without a couple of horrifying monsters... 

... right?

There were really a ton of lights at the Botanical Garden. The grounds were larger than I expected them to be and then were totally covered with displays, with lots of different paths going off in every direction. Every half hour, there was a light show around the garden's Livingstone Lake, with "dancing lights" flashing and dimming in time to music being broadcast over loudspeakers throughout the garden. I hurried to catch it on video, below... it starts out a bit fuzzy but becomes clearer, so bear with it!

Today I've begun the process of taking down our Christmas decorations and un-dressing our tree. I'm not pleased about it though, because the tree still looks, feels and smells terrific. (Sidenote: Watering your Christmas tree with sugar water is the way to go. It was a tip I received from the guys I bought the tree from, and the tree has hardly shed any needles at all!) Aside from it making our living room smell nice, having a large plant in the room (even a large dead plant) with white lights on it has provided a really nice light treatment for our living room. Soft white lighting emanating from a 5-foot tall douglas fir? Suck on that, Ikea Vidja floor lamp.