WYLTC Valentine Love Birds

This week Valentines is in the air for the ladies at Wood You Like To Craft!

We are up first with our "Love Is Tweet" Love Birds.

Head over to Wood You Like To Craft to check out our latest project and make sure to check back each day this week to see what Wendy, Melinda and Krystal have up their sleeves!

P.S.  Where did January go?

Love....Is For The Birds....

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I just had to share my daughter's fun Valentines today.

They were so funny to do and easy!

Over the last couple of years I have become a devoted fan to photo Valentines.

Not only are they personalized but they are so easy to do.

Picasa makes it easy to add the text right onto the picture and all you have to do is hit print!

Our little ducks which are not so little now were this year's theme

and we've been thinking up funny sayings since school started of what to say.

"Be Mine, Valentine....or my Heart will QUACK!"

We hole punched 2 little holes on the side and slipped a heart lollipop in place.

Next project was her funny Valentine box.

I didn't get great pictures of how it worked.  This year all the kids in the district are learning about

simple machines and had to incorporate them into their boxes.

I told Candace we needed a whole post on simple machine ideas because there

are none out there.  Well, at least no pictures and I need pictures!

The back had a lever (like a see saw).  We cut a small hole and threaded a shim

in so that the mouth would open to eat the Valentines.

Then a thousand little squares of tissue paper later (to hide the square box shapes)

I had a very happy little girl and some really weird looks from people as we drove to school.

We hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!

Now....off to the school parties~

WYLTC? Crafty Sisters Chevron Heart Flower Garden Stakes

It's our turn today over at Wood You Like To Craft with this month's theme of Chevron and we are sharing a simple Valentine's Day wood craft you'll want to add to your "to do" list! ~ Come on over and take a peek!

Love Shack!

Yup, I said Love Shack!  It's fitting though right?
A couple of weeks ago I was enlightening my daughter on all things of my youth including all the crazy songs that our little brother and I would sing at the top of our lungs as we drove around our yard on the 3 wheeler. I've completely dated myself haven't I?  I'm sure our neighbors thought we were completely nuts.
Well I still want to dance every time I hear the song and want to call my brother and sing it to him over the phone.  I'm sure he's glad when those calls go straight to voice mail.:)

Well Candace and I always love playing around with Valentine candies and I got the best Gingerbread house mold before Christmas that I never got a chance to use.  It's a Pampered Chef mold from 20 years ago!  (Thank you Ebay!)
We decided to use sugar cookie dough instead of gingerbread and it worked great.
Be forewarned though~it takes a lot of dough!  One single batch of our Mom's Famous Sugar Cookie dough makes one house.  Make sure to cook the dough a bit longer so it's nice and brown around the corner and will be extra strong for the house.  I cooked mine about 12 minutes each.

 Gather some great treats!  Keeping them separated in a muffin tin worked great!  The hardest part was keeping Daddy's hands out!

The frosting is the most crucial part!  You have to have some serious "glue" and I always get nervous about the kids licking their fingers with raw egg white in Royal Icing.  You will love Wilton's Meringue Powder!  It contains pasteurized dried egg whites and it's so easy to use.
The recipe is quick and easy too!

Wilton's Royal Icing
3 Tablespoons Wilton Meringue Powder
4 cups sifted powdered sugar
6 Tablespoons of water

Beat all ingredients at low speed 7-10 minutes until icing forms peaks.  Makes about 3 cups.

One batch was enough for us to put together 2 houses.  The frosting dried rock hard and fast!
This was such a fun project to do and the kids had so much fun!

Now to fill up the Valentine advent calendar and get out the rest of the Valentine decorations I procrastinated getting out.....

If you are looking for some fun Valentine printable freebies make sure to check out some cute subway art
for every season by Elise at Halloween Costumes.com

                                                 
and......if you're in the mood for some B-52's.....click the picture!
Happy 1st of February!

Cupid Cones

Target has all their Valentine candy on sale this week
and I went a little crazy buying some~note to self, don't shop when hungry.

I think I'm totally in love with cone bags.  I had some left over from making up the Cocoa cones at Christmas~they come in a package of 24 for $1.99 so they are a great deal!  There is just something fun about the shape that makes everything look even better than normal.  I made a few up for some friends I don't get to see very often that I'm missing today.

Tonight hopefully we'll finish off a project we've been working on for the last week~the kids are going to love it!  Everything seems to take so much longer to do in January, am I the only one who thinks that?  Candace and I have been doing all those crazy "To Do" list items~like pull and clean behind the fridge, the washer and dryer, re-string the blinds, sort every single Lego so they can be thrown around the play room next week.  Ya know, Mom stuff.  At least it was warm enough (yup 37 degrees) to fill up the kiddie pool for my duckies.  It was hard to try and snap a picture and not get completely splashed!

 Life's little pleasures.:)
 What do you in January?

Love Floats

It's been so cold here the last couple of weeks that we haven't been very motivated to craft.  The only thing I've been motivated to do is drop off my kid at school and crawl back under the covers to watch episodes of Psych!  Just kidding, while Candace sorts toys in her bonus room I've been catching up on all my touch up painting.  Sounds thrilling huh.  Definitely not blog worthy stuff.

I've seen this idea around for a while where you can use Cherry 7UP instead of root beer for a float.  I thought it looked so cute that I did it for my church Activity Day Girls last week. They looked great but Cherry 7Up left me wanting....it just wasn't strong enough to balance out the vanilla ice cream.  So since we are busy preparing Science Project experiments in our house- we thought we would try an experiment of our own.  My daughter was all too happy to be the judge!

We tried Shasta Raspberry Creme Soda 

                                                           

and Barq's Red Creme Soda.

                                                   
Both are pretty tasty but I think the Raspberry Creme might be a tad better.
They were so easy to make for my girls~I pre-scooped the ice cream and stored them in the freezer until ready to go.  Add a couple of cute Valentine straws and who can resist?

Now if you really want something tasty you'll have to try these Italian Creme Sodas~
Head over to Butter With A Side Of Bread for an easy and delicious recipe for homemade Italian Sodas.  Yum!
                                         

Next Year's Valentines

I survived Valentine's Day!

Sounds drastic doesn't it,

but that's about how I felt last night

after scrambling to make sure everything was ready for

my daughter's school party and then an hour later I had

my Sunday School girl's Valentine party.

I thought it would be fun to see some of the Valentines that

were homemade, which the Moms all got from Pinterest,

our favorite go-to place for ideas.

First up are the Valentines!

Above is my daughter's last moment scramble idea.

We were in Zurchers party store for a at least an hour

trying to come up with something.

It couldn't be too girly cuz ya know she's got boyfriends.

Clarification Boy Friends.  2 separate words.  Phewww.

Somehow the snakes were okay for girls since

they had red and white Valentine stripes.:)

Here are a couple I loved:

Okay, fortune cookies~LOVE this!

How fun is this arrow made from a Glow stick!

I had to share this yummy recipe too from Kraft!

They are Strawberries 'n Cream Minis!

They are the yummiest creamy sinful Jello Jiggler I've ever had!

I found these cute condiment cups at Walmart

and they were perfect for the individual servings for the party.

Of course we had cupcakes and that yummy Betty Crocker Chex Mix.

Holy smokes that was tasty!

I forgot to grab a picture but I tried something different with punch this year~

Have you seen these at The Container Store or Walmart?

Well I made up my punch in the larger one and used it at both parties.

It holds 2 1/2 gallons and it doesn't leak all over and isn't glass breakable.

I was pretty proud of myself for not dropping $20 on a cheap punch bowl

and only $8 on one of these.

Even better~the kiddos could get there own refills!

I admit I'm bummed it's all over so quickly, but.....

Who's ready for EASTER!!!!:)

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is it...the last of the bulk candy.  I don't know what I was thinking when I bought that much candy!I added jellybeans into a glass vase, using a smaller vase to hold the water for the roses.

 It is an easy and unique way to give those you love flowers.

 This pretty Easter jellybean centerpiece was my inspiration, found at A Passion For Creativity. 

Today I also made the Betty Crocker heart peanut butter cookies that are everywhere on Pinterest.

I went over to their site and noticed that Betty is using a different recipe for the peanut butter cookie.  I'm sure it's great, but Nicole has been using an old Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie recipe that you can't go wrong with.  If they are not overcooked, these cookies are sooooo good. 

Here's the recipe:

1/2 c. margarine or butter

1/2 c. peanut butter

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 1/4 c. flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

Refrigerate, bake at 375 for 7-9 minutes. 

We are off to all the class parties..I swear holiday party days at school are some of the craziest.

  Nicole will be back tomorrow to share her Valentine party ideas!

Cupid's Apples

Okay so Candace seriously bought close to 5lbs of red hots. 

Let's just "say" it was her medication doing the talking......

So what do you do with that many red hots?

We attempted to make candied red apples of course!

There's lots of great recipes on the Internet so we tried 2 of them.

One was so hard we thought our teeth would crack off with one bite.

The other made us think our fillings would be left behind.

Yummy right?

Well they sure look pretty in the picture.

My daughter thought they were straight from the Evil Queen from Snow White.

We thought we'd entice the boys by shooting arrows through them

as if that would be cool to a boy as long as it's not "Cupid's" arrow.

Not cool Mom....

Do you have a successful perfect red candy apple recipe

like the kind at the fair that melts in your mouth?

Please let us know, we're too young for dentures...

 

Valentine Candy Bouquet

 This is what happens when I am stuck in the house recovering from being sick with limited access to crafting supplies...I get creative with candy! I didn't have the energy to hit the craft stores, so my major shopping trips were to the grocery store. It's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough!

I have a hard time passing by the Valentine bulk candy without stopping to fill a bag.  Red and pink gumdrops, jellybeans, red hots....I can't help it!  They are just so darn cute.  I also found Valentine candy corn. Gross to eat, but they make perfect petals for flowers.  

  

For the base of the candy flowers, I used Styrofoam discs that I painted red with craft paint.  I poked the small dowel into the Styrofoam disc and added a bit of hot glue to stabilize the foam. 

Each piece of candy was added with a hot glue gun. I made sure to use a low temp gun to avoid some serious burns to the fingers!

I also grabbed a bag of gummy ring candy (Peach O's) at the store that fit perfectly around the large gum drops. 

For the heart shapes flowers, I used heart shaped cookie cutters to cut into the foam. The cookie cutters worked surprisingly well on the foam!  

I gave it a good crunch with the cookie cutter and then cleaned the rest up with a knife.  I think the red hot hearts are my favorite.

Painting the Styrofoam the same color as the candy helps to hide the gaps.

 Nicole and I have made candy topiaries a couple of times, like the Jelly Bean and Halloween topiaries.
(I missed Nicole this time...she didn't want to catch what I had!) In those cases, we used Styrofoam balls, which are easier to place candy around.  You have to get creative with candy placement on the discs. 
I filled the edges of these flowers with red hots to avoid getting too bulky.

I hot glued layers of Styrofoam into the glass vase, making sure there was room for the jellybeans to fit along the side. Next I added the flowers, then filled the vase with pounds of jellybeans. I used heart lollipops to fill in the empty spaces. All of the stems were wrapped with green floral tape and the heart leaves were made from scrap paper.

It's nice to know I can still enjoy Valentine's candy without having to eat it.  It's also a lot less tempting to eat when there's gobs of hot glue on each piece! :)

 

SWAK!

This week I've been busy making some Valentine letters
and I just had to use some of the cute My Mind's Eye paper
that we used on the Valentine banner.
My pictures don't do the paper justice but they were still fun to do!

I'm missing my crafting partner in crime Candace!
She is doing much better thanks to some
great antibiotics for her bronchitis~she is quickly on the mend.
So I thought I'd share some ideas for my daughter's school Valentine party
that I'm scrambling to put together today!

First off Candace shared with me this great resource for sending out
the party invite and volunteer checklist for the school party.
I don't know about you but as the Room Mom I feel like all the notes get lost in transit
from school to home and then everyone simultaneously volunteers to donate
the bag of M&M's so I'm left with a bunch of phone calls begging them to bring
fruit and veggies.  Jealous aren't ya!



































The site is called BringIt! and it will email out a note to everyone
on your list, with a sign up sheet, first come first serve.
It will then send out email reminders before the party so nobody forgets!
Brilliant isn't it!  It's totally free too!

But what do you guys do for treats?
Above is pictured a white chocolate version of Muddy Buddies
recommended by my daughter's teacher.  Yum right? Here's the link for the yummy recipe courtesy of Betty Crocker!  I'm soooooo making these, party or not~they will be in my belly or more accurately on my fanny, thighs, jowls.....I could go on and on.:)

I know a lot of schools have outlawed sweet treats
and luckily ours just encourages us to be healthy.
I looked on Pinterest which is an evil site for someone on a diet....
and there are so many yummy treats~but are they healthy?
So here's my plea for help~~~Do you have any great ideas to share!
I'm officially desperate and need help!
Leave us a comment and let us know!