In the Kitchen with Reebs: Adventures in Pickling

I've always been interested in trying my hand at pickling, however I also was always worried that it would be really difficult, and you can't really know if it worked for 6-8 weeks. It was one of those things I had kind of given up on trying, until my mom sent me a photo a last week of dill and bread and butter pickles her and my dad had done. And just like that, I decided to try my hand at it. Here are my lessons learned.

Preparation: Make sure you have all the ingredients you need beforehand, and in the right amount. I realized as I was already boiling the water to sterilize my jars that I didn't have quite enough beets, so headed off to the farmers market. Which brings me to...
Volume: You don't have to pickle all the things at once. In true Reebsy fashion once I decided to start pickling, it wasn't enough to just try beets. And of course when I went to the market I stumbled upon some great looking pickling cukes with some great dill...
Sugar and Vinegar: Pickling takes a lot of these two ingredients, more sugar than I ever expected. Which also meant that I ran out at one point, but had prepared the cukes for the bread and butter pickles, so yes, I was up until 11pm pickling.
It Gets Hot!: I sent Brent out with the girls for a few hours, and when they got home we had very strict rules about them not entering the kitchen. It must have stuck because today Claire asked a few times whether she was allowed in the kitchen. It's really just not worth the risk to have the kids around for the canning, pots boil over, everything is hot and steaming.
Recipes: I recommend using recipes from very reputable sites (such as Bernardin, Ball etc.).

Also know that some recipes are more involved than others. Beets, for example, require actually cooking the beets first, cooling and peeling them before processing them in jars.