My love for Mason Jars

Mason jars are trending right now, it's true.  They are everywhere--in our cupboards as drinking glasses, on our shelves displaying flowers, and in our kitchens storing food.

I have personally found myself fascinated with their "super powers" lately.  Mason jars are the "little household staple that could."  They are practical and pretty.  They remind me of my past while promising to be around for years to come.

I have started collecting different colors of antique Mason jars.  I found some online, some at an antique store...I used them to decorate, hold certain objects and just look pretty.  However, they had belonged to someone else in another life.  It made me wonder about their story.  Did they belong to a farmer's wife? To a woman who had her own garden?

When I was in Mississippi in July, Gran Fran gave me a precious gift.  A Mason canning jar that belonged to her mother, Frances Leona Dreher (Grammy), my great-grandmother.  As I held the gorgeous tiffany blue jar in my hand and felt the rusty metal lid, I couldn't help but shiver with the notion that this jar had been in my family for nearly 90 years.  It had held tomatoes, peaches, and green beans.  I imagined Gran Fran, a little girl, racing to the cellar in her Nebraska home, grabbing the jar full of peaches off the shelf, and returning upstairs to the warm kitchen where Grammy cooked dinner.