Month: May 2018

Summer For Me Starts With Making Strawberry Preserves

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Last weekend, my daughter, Joy Burns Day and I made 41 half pints of strawberry preserves.  This is had become a tradition for us to make preserves every summer.  We make strawberry, plum, peach and I make apple butter.  It all started when one of my former employees, Nancy,  brought me a jar of peach preserves and my daughter tasted it on a biscuit and declared that it was the best thing she had ever eaten out of a jar.  We bought peaches for Nancy as an incentive to come over and teach us her method of making peach preserves.  We have been making various preserves now for about 10 years.  Ken, my late husband, enjoyed it as well and so he bought us the big copper pot in the picture.  Copper cooks so much faster than stainless steel.  We each have our own chore in the process.  I prepare the fruit and chop it in a food processor.  Joy does the cooking.  Kate, my 10 year old granddaughter labels the jars.  This years batch turned out beautiful.  Joy said “the preserves are so red that it looks like we added food color”.

I don’t know which I enjoy the most, eating the preserves or the family time together making them.  Come to think of it, I love both.

 

Thank You To All Who Have Served

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I was born in the middle of World War II.  I shudder to think what would have happened if we had not won that war. We were living behind the fence when my Dad was called up to serve in the Army but when they found out that he was working at Oak Ridge they sent him home.  He did not even know what he was working on until he heard it on the radio.

What Our Non-Profit Customers Are Saying About Results

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It is one thing for us to say that we are really good at helping non-profit organizations with their appeals, annual reports, newsletters and more but it is another thing when a non-profit customers tells us about results.

“Thank you for your great work on our Annual Appeal Letter in November/December. It went phenomenally and raised 10x what it had the year before!”

Bent W.

I am glad when our non-profit customers get good results because it means that we have done our part to help and also because when our non-profit customers raise money, it is good for the community as well.

If you aren’t using Burns Mailing & Printing, Inc. for your non-profit organization, call me today for a free consultation. Phyllis Burns 865 584-2265 or email me at phyllis@burnsmp.com.  We are the experts in non-profit direct mail.

Peony Flowers, And What Memories They Hold For Me

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My mailing Manager, Amy Motsinger brought me this lovely bouquet of Peonies.  I mentioned that these were my Mother’s favorite flowers so she wanted me to have this beautiful arrangement that she picked from her yard.

My family, as did many other families, in my childhood had decoration day at the cemetery and then usually a dinner outside at a relative’s house.  I loved it because I got to play with all my cousins.  Mother grew the Peonies to put on the graves of her parents and other loved ones.  She called them “Pineys”.  It was not until I was an adult that I knew that they were called Peony.  I can remember her say “I sure hope my Pineys are in bloom by decoration day”. The flowers were picked and put into big tubs of water to later be put in vases at the cemetery.   My brother-in-law, Delmar Haynes, joked that his job was to carry the tub on decoration day. It is strange how just a flower can invoke memories of childhood.  My sisters and I have carried on the tradition of putting the flowers on the graves at Asbury Cemetery but we don’t grow the flowers we buy them from a green house.  I wonder if the tradition will continue after we are gone?

Thank you Amy for the lovely flowers and the lovely memory that came with them.