diy custom spice rack

Whew! What a craaaaaazy couple of weeks. I didn't disappear into thin air, but I did disappear into the theater. Saturday night was closing night of a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Gondoliers I had the pleasure of performing in. I love theater but it does take a toll on one's ability to cook, exercise, socialize, and otherwise maintain some semblance of a normal lifestyle. Including keeping up with one's blog.

It also didn't help that I suffered from a major food prep injury last week. Let's just say, in my case, carelessness + swiss veggie peeler + butternut squash= a few hours in the ER + 4 stitches in my thumb. I'll be buying pre-cut squash from now on...

Well, now that you have forgiven me for my utter neglect, I'm going to fill you in on a little project I undertook at the beginning of the month. We were given a great little spinning counter-top spice rack for our wedding, and I've loved having it. The problem was that most of the herbs and spices that came with it were ones I never use, and I ended up having a cluttered cupboard of the flavors I do use in my cooking. A while ago, one of us had the idea to dump the spices we never use and fill those jars with our favorites. I finally had a morning to kill and decided to go for it.

First, I made a list of the twenty top spices I would love to have close at hand to make sure I filled the rack with the right choices. Then, I emptied the rejects (mustard seed, gross seasong salt, etc) into baggies to keep just in case and washed and dried those jars. Next, I cut paper circles to make new labels for the lids, and used a fine point sharpie to label each circle, then glued the labels to the lids. (If I were more crafty, or more motivated, I might have done something more adorable like used cute fabric. But I'm not crafty and I was barely motivated enough to do this project in the first place so I'll take what I can get.) When the lids had dried, I used a homemade paper funnel to fill the empty jars with the spices I had chosen and returned the jars to the rack. Voila! an actually useful counter-top spice rack. I love it!

I'm curious about your solutions to the spice storage dilemma? I can't be the only person out there to have had this issue. Let me know in the comments!