People my age and older know of the original intended use of a mason jar, and that was for storing vegetables and fruits that had been preserved at home. Rural farmsteads and homes usually had vegetable gardens and fruit trees, and housewives canned or “put up” their own vegetables, fruits, jams, jellies, and other food stuffs for winter time and lean times. Mason jars were, and still are, the storage container of choice for this.

Now, we drink from them, we turn them into snow globes, we use them to store toiletries…there are a thousand and one uses for mason jars and a quick search of Pinterest will give you pages of ideas for crafting with them. Google “mason jar uses” and you get MORE pages upon pages of ideas (including those on Pinterest) for everything from terrariums (I may do one of those) to science projects! Below are the top five ideas that I found online that have to do with mason jars. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did finding them!

1) A meal in a jar. How simple, how easy, how…crafty! When I saw this blog, it made me want to run right out and try this! Even though I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t like their food to touch. In the interest of experimenting, I’m willing to give it a go!

2) I have a brown thumb. Really. I can grow herbs, and I can grow veggies, but anything remotely resembling a house plant or flower, and I will kill it. Purely unintentional, of course, but if I try it more than once, does that constitute premeditated plant murder? Anyway, I want to try this terrarium. It looks cool and death-proof.

3) Okay, so I used to decorate in country shabby-chic. My house was all Americana accents and garage-store finds that I fixed up, so something like these glasses that I found on this blog would have fit right in on nights around the fire pit.

4) These mason jar pincushions appeal to my love of organizing! And I love off-beat ways of storage. I have a sewing kit, but I may just add something like this to my collection, so that I can have a small sewing kit where I need it most. Of course, leave it up to crafting maven Martha Stewart to come up with something so functional and yet fun!

5) Last but not least, another organizing wunderfind from Martha. Although I couldn’t find it on her site, I found a blogger that posted about it. Its pretty self-explanatory, and if you have any Martha Stewart Whole Livings around from 2009, its in one of those issues. Hey, I tried to find it. She may be the crafting maven, but she’s not good at archiving online.