Cinnamon Buns and I went back to visit my parents this Christmas. It was a great break, and it was wonderful to see green grass and green plants! It’s the first time Cinnamon Buns has had a green Christmas in a long time, but it is what I grew up with on the West (Wet) Coast. As happens around the holidays, we came back home with much more than we left with. Some of the things weighing down our suitcases on the way back were these lovely boxes:

Wedding favours! Cinnamum fulfilled her part of the bargain – mixed berry, blackberry, and raspberry jam. Also in that tower-o-jam are the blueberry and the peach that I made over the summer. The only thing left is the strawberry jam, which will have to wait until strawberry season starts up again.

Now that we’ve got so much of the jam, I started thinking more seriously about how to package them up. We bought the fabric ages ago, and I still want to use it, because I think it is a cool way to show what type of jam it is, without having a giant label. The 125mL jars are pretty tiny, so big labels don’t work so well. There are a couple ways to secure the fabric over your jam jar – you can use the 2-part canning lid that they come with:

(from the Weddingbee forums! Thanks daniellemybelle!)

Or you can secure the fabric over the 2-piece lid with elastic or string:

(from Geoparent)

Originally, I wanted to do the first one because I felt it would be easier than fiddling with elastic and string, but now the adorable-ness of the fabric and string is getting to me!

We’re going to have 6 different fabrics, and about 12 jars of each, so the favour table won’t be matchy-mcmatcherson but I’m thinking I could unify it all by using the same colour of bakers twine and have our little labels be all the same. As I said above, these jars are a little too short for sticky labels on the glass, so I’m thinking a little circle tag threaded on to the bakers twine that is holding the fabric on. I hear you asking ‘But, if the fabric signifies the flavour, what goes on the labels?’ and I will answer you:

Puns.

All the best jokes in the Cinnamon Bun household are greeted by groans. We try to never miss an opportunity, and congratulate each other when we get particularly good ones. I want to come up with an assortment of short-but-sweet jam puns that will fit onto a little cardstock circle. They don’t particularly need to have anything to do with the flavour of the jam, they just need to be groaners. I want to make a bunch of them, so there are lots of different ones to read in the favour display. When I told Cinnamon Buns that I wanted to make punny labels for our jam, he said “I like you. I’m keeping you!” so I know he is up to the challenge.

To brainstorm, I wrote down a few words that had to do with jam, then tried to fit them into a statement that started with ‘Thank you’. It is really important to me to thank the guests for being a part of our day, and I want the jam to be an obvious “Thank you!!” gift. My brainstorm words were: berry, jam, sugar, sticky, sweet, peach, jar, can, toast… And so far I’ve come up with:

• Thanks for jammin’ with us!
• Thank you berry much!
• Thanks for a peachy evening!
• Thanks for being so sweet!
• Thanks for sticking with us!
• Thanks for spreading the love!
• Thanks for helping us seal the deal!
• Thanks for a jamtastic evening!

On the labels, I want to make the pun word stand out a little, either by bolding or highlighting in some other way. Obviously, the berry and the peach ones would need to be attached to the appropriate jams. I don’t think ‘sticky’ really comes through in the ‘sticking with us’ one, so that might be out. I know there is something we can do with the word ‘toast’, but my brain is just not computing at the moment. And of course, I’ll need to come up with something witty for a sign to go nearby, so people know they’re meant to take one!

So here we go hive, I’m asking you: what puns can you think of? Which are your favourites? Pun it up in the comments! (Miss Jam, I will be stalking your posts for jam puns from now until June!)