Cutie Drying Rack

After getting really tired of looking at the random piles of dieing plants laying around my kitchen...decided it was time for them to finally have their place.  I'm starting a bit early drying the herbs from the garden so that I'm not inundated with the task later in the season, HENCE big messes beginning to accumulate.

Sure you can buy nice drying racks (for a price), but I wanted something simple, cheap and FAST.  With herbs you have to dry them in small batches to ensure complete dryness, so I will rotate them through until the garden season is finished. This ended up being the perfect AND might I add, rather decorative way to do this.

I copied the idea from my girls hair bow tree, using ribbon, raffia and the sewing machine.  You can also just hand stitch, glue or use Velcro.  Attach a narrower ribbon to the front of a wide ribbon and stitch across both top and bottom, leaving the rest open so that you can clip on the herbs.  Use small bunches of clipped herbs, tie raffia (I use raffia for sooo many things!) around herbs and use a clip or clothes pin to fasten the bunch to the ribbon.  Once the leaves are thoroughly dried (you can tell by the crunch) store them in appropriate containers.  I save my old spice jars and will put them in there.  Pretty cool, eh?

The drying area is inconspicuous and yet attractive!