Add Some Spice To Your Life

...Or at least your spice drawer.

When we moved to our new house, I opted to put all of the spices in a drawer by the stove.  It seems like a great idea since I like to grab random spices and throw them in the pot  while I'm cooking. 

The only negative?  I could never find what I was looking for!  If I laid the bottles down, they rolled around.  If I stood them up, I could see the label.

So I took to my favorite website ever - Pinterest!  I came across this post.

I started gathering supplies:

• Calkboard Paint
• Colored Chalk
• Old Newspaper
• Baby Food Jars - I got mine from someone on Facebook.  I just put out an "ISO" post.  I paid $0.10 each, so I got 30.

Let's get to work!

First I soaked the jars in hot, soapy water to loosen the labels.

 

Some of the labels slid right off.  A couple I had to use my Pampered Chef pan scraper to scrape some of the glue off.

 

After I got all the labels and glue off, everything went into the dishwasher.  The next step was the paint the lids of the jars.  Try not to paint the grass.  (Sorry Drew!)

 After that, it was just a matter of filling the jars with spices and labeling the tops.  Except, labeling didn't go quite as expected.

 

The colored chalk was scratching the paint off.  I tried a chalk pencil from my sewing kit, but you could barely see it.  Finally I tried a softer chalk from a 2000-something art kit that I'm pretty sure I got in middle school.  Alas, the chunky chalk was too chunky.  However, the chunky chalk was great for "conditioning" the chalkboard paint.  And by conditioning I mean swirly some chalk across the paint and rubbing it in.  I chose to wipe it off afterwards, but you could leave it.  Just depends on what you like!

So I broke down and bought this baby:

It's called a chalk marker and is the same thing they use on those signs at restaurants.  It was super easy to write with and left a neat text.

Now, back to the filling of the jars!

I laid out each of my spices beside and jar and began filling.  After I filled it, I labeled the top. 

Now my spice drawer looks like this:

Isn't it pretty?

So now that I've been living with it for a little while, what do I think?

I still love the look, but the lids don't screw on perfectly.  Maybe this is because I had two different brands and the jars were a little different?  I think I may replace my  baby food jars with new small jars from somewhere like Hobby Lobby.  If I get around to it, I'll let you know.

My other complaint is that the jars tend to slide around in the drawer. It's something I could probably solve by putting a grippy drawer liner in.

How do you store your spices?  Have you had any issues reusing baby food jars?  If you try out this project, I'd love to hear your results!