It is that time of year again, and as usual my husband has been feverishly making jams and jellies for Christmas gifts for our family and friends. He has an empire of sorts, check out Jelly Man Kelly, that is my husband! He is an amazing cook, baker, and jelly maker. He can do it all in the kitchen with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back, no, really, he can! Ok, maybe not the eyes closed part! ;-)
Every year he does a fabulous job of creating signature jams and jellies that are regularly stollen at family gift exchanges. And every year I make labels for his concotions, and this year is no different. In 2009 I added his characture to the labels, and everyone couldn't stop laughing, and believe me, it will be there again this year. But this year I had the added task of labeling some homemade vanilla extract that has been steeping in our kitchen for the last 6 months. I was asking Jelly Man Kelly last night what I should put on the labels, and he said to make sure not to forget the vanilla labels, and I gave him a general overview of what I had in mind for those labels. I explained that I wanted to have them say something to the effect of "Merry Christmas from the Smith's." He just about fell off the couch as he exclaimed "They have to have my characture and say Jelly Man Kelly on them!" At which point I politely reminded him (ok, maybe not so politely) that he and I had BOTH scored the vanilla beans, and poured the vodka into the big bottles to start the steeping process. Yeah, he didn't seem to think that qualified the labels to not have to include Jelly Man Kelly, and not have his characture. Needless to say, we had a long discussion (ok, maybe a couple of minutes, not forever), and it was determined that having the labels say "From the kitchen of Mr. & Mrs. Jelly Man Kelly" with BOTH our charactures on it would be acceptable. So here it is, in all it's glory (well, not all it's glory because I didn't print them on normal white labels, no, no, they're on brown kraft paper shipping labels):