If you get grapes; make grape jelly!

I happily received two bags of Concord grapes from a women at church.  Our deal was; I would give her a couple of jars of the jelly and I would also give her a couple jars of my pickles from this year. With my new found love of preserves ....of course I agreed.

Not really sure where to begin so I called my mom!  She decided she'd come over and she was more than happy to me; all I needed was to find a recipe.  So of course I called my MIL and she gave me a recipe.

Once my mom came over we decided to follow the recipe on the liquid pectin box.  

First we; and by we I mean they ....had to wash and pluck all the grapes off of the stems. 

Then the grapes needed to boiled and be squashed down for ten minutes to release all of the juices. The potato masher worked great!

Once this was completed we needed to strain it....essentially we made grape juice....really yummy grape juice!

We put the strained juice back in the large pot and added the sugar called for on the liquid pectin packet.  We got 12 cups of juice so that was three recipes.  So we added 20 3/4 cups of sugar; the recipe warned against cutting the sugar so we didn't dare!!!!

We needed to bring this to a rapid boil and then add the liquid pectin.

After the pectin is added it needed to boil for a minute.  

As far as getting the jars ready we put our clean washed jars on a tray and put them in the oven.  Set the oven to 350F; once the oven reached 350F we turned it off and left the sterilized jars inside.  We boiled our lids and tongs.

Let the filling begin....

We kept some of the grape juice and served it with dinner....I wish I had taken a picture of all of our grape moustaches!!!! Hers was the cutest!

My growing cellar!!!!  I can't wait to give them all away...Christmas here we come!