There is not much you can’t do with a Kilner jar these days. Whatever the season, the holiday, or the event, the Kilner jar will find a way to worm its way into your plans and morph into something useful or decorative for you. Apart from what used to be the obvious use for a Kilner jar, i.e. preserving and storing in the kitchen, there is a whole host of other creative ideas, some of which we have tried out and shared with you, which lend themselves to each and every room in the house, and each and every event you host.
Serve up Kilner Jar cocktails in the summer time, for a fresh and funky new way to keep your guests refreshed. In the Autumn, decorate them with thin dry rusty coloured leaves and sit a tea light or small candle inside to give a lovely warm glow to keep the chill away. Year round, the coloured Kilner jars make lovely bathroom storage, to keep all those pesky bits and bobs that clutter the bathroom neat and tidy and always to hand. Store nuts, bolts and screws in a clip top Kilner so you’re always ready for a spot of DIY. Fill it with mini toiletries for an inventive Mothers or Fathers Day gift. Collect loose change in a Kilner jar to save up some pennies. Or even layer the dry ingredients of a cake mix, then decorate with a ribbon and recipe card for a lovely home made gift.
At Christmas time, the Kilner Jar is a candle, a Christmas decoration, a jar to be filled with scented pine cones or “snowflake” flavoured pot pourri. Fill it with bath salts or sweets or make it into a home made candle and you have a Kilner Jar Christmas gift. Make individual Kilner desserts, for quick and easy puddings with a professional touch. Fill a large Kilner jar with fairy lights for an innovative Christmas decoration or even put tea lights in smaller Kilner jars and hang on a string leading up to your front door for traditional and beautiful outdoor lanterns. The list goes on…….and on…..
So, with Halloween approaching, and the prospect of a little spooky party and some trick or treating on the horizon, Kate and I decided to test out some Halloween decorations and also make use of our beloved Kilner jars. These are a couple of very affordable, super easy ideas, which will keep the kids entertained at minimum effort and cost to you.
Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without creepy crawlies and Kate came up with the idea for Spider flavoured jellies in Kilner Jars. All you need is some jelly of your choice (we used orange to match the colours of the pumpkins and munchkins) and either some 250ml Kilner Preserve jars or 125ml Kilner clip top jars. Simply make your jelly as normal, fill the jars and drop in a plastic spider. If you chill the jellies in the freezer, the Kilner jars come out with a thin layer of condensation which adds to their spookiness.
For drinks, we used our Kilner Drinks Dispenser and filled it with “blood” cordial, which was actually orange cordial with the best part of a bottle of red food colouring added to it. This gives it a great blood red colour. We also decorated the outside of the Kilner Dispenser with sticky spiders, and of course added more plastic spiders inside the dispenser. If you are throwing a Halloween party for adults, you can always add another Kilner Dispenser with a “blood” cocktail, instead of cordial. As long as the original drink is a lighter shade of red than the food colouring, you shouldn’t have a problem.
We then served our “blood and spiders” concoction in Kilner drinking jars. Again these can be decorated with sticky spiders to add the finishing Halloween touch.
Drape fake cobwebs over your drinks table, scatter in some creepy crawlies and stand the Kilner dispenser in the middle, then dot around carved pumpkins, with tea lights inside to give an eerie glow and light up your Kilner “blood” dispenser. Oh and don’t forget to switch out the lights and shout “Boo!”