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valentines party 2012.

ETA: Minute to Win it from from HERE! Thanks you for all your kind comments. ♥

It’s hard to believe that we’re already into February, it feels like Christmas was yesterday, and now we’re moving onto Valentines stuff. I’m posting my party earlier this year, because I’m leaving on a jet plane this Friday for Australia! So exciting!! (I’ll share more about that later)

So anyways, every year I like to throw a little party for my kids and it gives me the chance to pull out my hundreds of pink dishes, bowls and heart shaped knick knacks to celebrate.

(You can check out my Valentines post from last year and my other Valentines stuff HERE!)

It was actually quite similar to last year, but instead of making pizza we ordered in. We had the Missionaries over for supper, played a fun game and had a wonderful time together.

Red velvet cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

Of course the standard salad with cheese X’s and O’s (using a cookie cutter) and heart shaped cucumber and red peppers.

For these little pudding cups, I dipped the rim in melted chocolate and then rolled them in pink and red sprinkles. They turned out really cute.

 

We played Valentines Minute to Win it. And it was tricky, only one person managed to make it at exactly a minute. Phew! Minute to Win it from from HERE!

I had some little gift baskets with candy and fun little treats and toys for the kids (and Missionaries!) Theirs had a lint roller and some other more “big kid” stuff. I also did my annual letter to each of the kids, but I’ll give that to them later to read on Valentines day. For the Elders I printed off a copy of a talk given by Elder Richards and just wrote a little note of encouragement and expressed my love and gratitude for them.

We had a great time, and as usual I had so many other ideas/plans and there just never seems to be enough hours in a day. Good thing I have lots of years ahead of me for parties like this!

valentines dinner 2011

I have a love/hate relationship with Valentines day. I love it because it’s pink and frilly and full of hearts and love and gooey, gushy things. But in the same breath, I could really care less about the whole standard “holiday” greeting card, flowers, chocolate thing. I would much rather move onto more important things like my birthday and Mother’s Day. ♥

But with that being said, I love planning me a party! And so, instantly the gooey, gushy holiday becomes my friend. I’m not so into the decorating part, but I love the food part. Raspberries, chocolate, whipping cream and strawberries. Romantic fizzy drinks and heart shaped anything.

I’m not going to go into as much detail as I usually would, since V-day is over and I’m sure nobody cares that much, but if you’ve got a question please feel free to leave a comment. ♥

Our yummy dinner, pizza bread with heart shaped peperonis.

The cupcakes were a vanilla cake with pink buttercream frosting, topped with chocolate whipped cream and a fresh strawberry, drizzled with milk chocolate. (okay, not drizzled, but globbed with chocolate)

My huge pile of Valentines from the children. I am so loved! ♥

I wrote each of the kids love letters this year. Something that I hope they will treasure and really take to heart, because I meant every word.

And that was our dinner. And Darren, even though I told him not to get me anything, had gone out to get something and when he got back I was upset that I forgot to tell him to get me a disposable icing bag for my cupcakes. Well, how’s this for coincidence… guess what he got me for Valentines day? A re-useable fancy icing bag and coupler. Such a smart hubby I have.

Hope your day was mushy, gushy and full of love. ♥ ♥ ♥

kids valentines.

My kids like to take those store bought paper Valentines to school, but the crafter in me just can’t let it happen. So I spent the day making these adorable little Valentine treats for Lily’s class, and Ava’s girlfriends.

They turned out cuter than I thought, and now I wish I’d bought enough supplies to make them for all the Primary kids, because, well they’re just that sweet. ♥

What you’ll need: individual boxes of sweethearts candy, Hershey kisses, colored paper, printable sticker sheets and string.

Start by taking your colored paper and folding it so it will wrap around your sweethearts box. I used a piece of computer paper to make my template and just copied it onto my thicker pink paper using my scoring blade.

I would give you my measurements, but your boxes of candy might be a different size, and really, they were all sorts of wacky, and numbers I don’t even know how to type out. Like one hundredth of an inch to the right of the 6/8th of an inch type measurements. It made my brain hurt.

Cut 2 pieces of string about 6 inches or so and tie the two together with a knot, somewhere around the middle is good. Attach the string to the side of your sweethearts box with a sticky tab.

At the end of each of those strings attach 2 Hershey kisses with sticker dots. I used a small circle punch and sticker sheets to make mine. (I have better pictures of this just a little bit further down)

Attach your scored paper to the candy box, I used one sticky tab on my paper to hold it in place, since we don’t want our paper sleeve slipping off.

I used glue for the other side, since it doesn’t touch the box, just the other edge of the paper.

Next we need to print our labels for the front of the boxes. I used full sized printable label sticker sheets (phew, that was a mouthful) and ran them through my printer.

Using my big shot, I cut each one out using my spellbinders. A circle punch would work too, but I couldn’t find mine.

(I will have a link so you can print these yourself at the bottom of this post)

Add your stickers to the front of your candy box and you’re done.

Sweet little Valentines iPods!

Aren’t they adorable!!

This idea was adapted from Family Fun.

You can use their iPod labels, but they only come 1 to a sheet and since I like to save paper where I can, I made a sheet of 24 in Photoshop. Feel free to grab them here.

Here’s a better picture of the stickers at the bottom of the Hershey kisses. I used the edges of the above stickers sheets to make all the little circles, it worked out great!

valentine swag.

When I found this adorable swag idea on a blog (one of those ones that you click, click, click and don’t know how you ended up there… I have no idea what it was called, but as soon as I find it, I will credit here.) I was a little sad anyways, because it was an old blog that hadn’t been updated in over 9 months. :( And she had some cute ideas!

So start with some plain old coffee filters. Since I don’t drink it, I bought mine at the dollar store; 200 for a buck. Pretty darn good deal.

Using a very small amount of food coloring, tint your water in whatever shade you choose. For me, it was a tiny bit of red to get a very soft pink color.

Drop your filters in one at a time into your colored water.

Let them sit for as long as you want. The longer they soak the more intense the color.

Take each filter out and squeeze the water out.

After you got your little pile of coffee filters, you can choose to lay them out flat to dry, or speed things up with a blow-dryer, or you can do what I did… pop them in the dryer, unfolded and 10 minutes later, fluffy dry colored filters.

(I dried 2 colors at the same time, and I would not recommend it at all. The colors bled onto each other and my sweet baby pink had blotchy brown spots. It’s okay, cause it doesn’t notice that much, but still disappointing.)

Next, gather together your supplies. Cupcake liners, doilies, dyed coffee filters in various colors, ribbons, newspaper circles and anything else you want to string on your swag.

The next step is as simple as stringing beads. I used embroidery floss and a needle and started stringing my paper goodies.

A knot with a dab of glue stops them from sliding down the embroidery floss.

Once your happy with your bunch of paper goodies. Tie another knot, head down the string about 12 inches or so and do it all over again.

I attached mine to the wall using thumb tacks and to disguise them I glued a tiny little pink bow onto it.

In between some of the paper goodies, I used the empty cardboard ribbon spools and hot glued a little piece of ribbon around them.

I don’t know why some crumply old pieces of paper are so appealing to me, but I love the way it looks.

I have coffee filter pom poms strung over my other door, but I didn’t get around to taking pictures today because my friend just got back from being in India for a whole month, and we had to catch up.

I’ll show those to you tomorrow… hopefully. ♥

super simple valentine’s pillow.

Are you ready for the easiest tutorial yet? And you’re totally okay that I didn’t take during pictures, only before and after?

Good then, we’re ready to go.

Start by taking an old sweater, or in my case a sweater vest. (I bought this at a thrift store for $2)

And chop off the top, just under the arm pits.

Don’t worry about the top part. There are still plenty of uses for it, I’ll show you one.

Next stitch a straight seam right along the part we just cut, not the bottom when it’s still all nice and hemmed lovely, we need that to be intact.

<insert picture that doesn’t exist here>

The next step is to take your pillow insert or stuffing, not Stove top, but quilt batting stuffing, and fill ‘er up.

<insert picture that doesn’t exist here>

Now we're going to finish it off. Take the lovely hemmed bottom portion of your swillow (sweater pillow- haha) making sure your stuffing or pillow doesn’t come out and blanket stitch it closed.

You Tube has some wonderful tutorials on blanket stitching if you need a refresher, or have no idea what I’m talking about.

And voila, your very first swillow.

I added a couple of buttons to mine, pulled really tight to make two little button tufted details.

I’m sorry for the lack of and poor-ish quality of pictures, but I’m too lazy to take my tiny lens off my camera and the rest of the house is a tip, and I don’t want that in the background, so super up close and kind of crappy it is.

Oh, and that sweet little white pillow in the background.. well Lily made that. It’s so super cute. She drew the hearts by herself and helped me sew them on. She picked the buttons and the ribbon and chose every spot to put them. It was a very fun project for the both of us.

Check out my 365 blog if you want to see more of Lily’s pillow!

pink cupcakes.

Before you know it, Valentines day will be here, and I'll take any excuse to bake, decorate, and breathe the color pink. So this year I'm getting started early, and trying some new recipes. And let me tell you, these are not just any ordinary pink cupcakes...

they are pink lemonade cupcakes.

The perfect balance between sweet and tart. (and they are pretty darn delicious if you ask me)

PINK LEMONADE CUPCAKES

• 1 pkg white cake mix without pudding in the mix
• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup thawed frozen pink lemonade concentrate; thawed
• 2 TBSP oil
• pink food coloring (optional)

frosting

• 4 cups icing sugar
• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup pink lemonade concentrate

1. Beat cake mix, water, egg whites, 1/3 cup lemon concentrate, oil and food coloring. Medium speed for 2 minutes. Spoon batter into lined muffin cups.

2. Bake 18-22 mins. Cool completely before frosting.

3. Beat icing sugar, butter and 1/4 cup lemonade concentrate, until well blended. (Add more concentrate to thin frosting if necessary.) Add pink coloring to desired color.

*Just a note, I added almost 1/2 cup of concentrate to my frosting because I found it quite thick and I really wanted it tart. I would keep adding and tasting until you like it.

They bake up so lovely and even. And flavor aside, they were honestly the most moist and delicious cupcake I have ever had.

Frost and add a straw for garnish. 

 
 
 Pretty easy huh. Let me know if you try them, I'd love to hear what you thought.

On a side note, I have found my blogging mojo (that didn't last long, haha) Now, if only I could find some time. I've been watching a little boy since just before Christmas, and it looks like my temporary job turned into a full time one. So 2 little babies are keeping me on my toes, and I'm lucky if I can find the time to unload the dishwasher, let alone update my blog. Anyways, thought I'd let you know.

Have a great night!

valentines day.

ETA: Sugar cookie recipe

For the record, I find the baking time excessively LONG!!  I bake my largish cookies for only about 8-10 minutes and my medium sized for 8, and my tiny ones for 5 minutes. I promise I will share the icing recipe with you another day. It's really not that hard to make, just very time consuming. :D

Phew, so we've been quite busy around here at the Workman house. Celebrating Valentines Day, working, cleaning and spending time yesterday for Family Day. I've got quite the blog post to share with you, and a ton of pictures too. I'll have to start with Valentines Day.

Alright, so the last couple of times I've done these fancy sugar cookies, the kids have been right there beside me, looking at me with their sweet little tear filled eyes, and wanting to participate so badly. So I relented and made some special chocolate sugar cookies complete with all the pink frosting they would need to create their masterpieces. (I have to add, that doing these cookies is extremely time consuming. To make and dye the frosting alone is at least an hour, not to mention making the dough and rolling and baking the cookies, but I love my kids and I would do anything for them)

The frosting. The piping bags hold the thicker frosting for the outline and the squeeze bottles had the "flooding" or runny frosting to fill it the outline. Everyone had a baggie of cookies.

 

(the paper towels in the bottom of the glasses are damp, and stop the icing tips from drying out and clogging with frosting.)

Alright, everyone is ready to go.

 

 

This is where I just take a step back, do some deep breathing exercises and let them do their thing. Just like I have to resist the urge to re-make their beds in the morning.

 

(I'll just quickly explain the concept of these cookies, so you pipe the edge and fill with the flood icing. Then use a toothpick to coax the runny liquid to the edges, where the thicker piping holds in all in. It smooths out like glass and hardens after a while)

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate as we went, some more than others...

 

I even managed to make a couple, but they didn't turn out the greatest, because I had to keep getting up and down to help the kids. Can you pick mine out?

 

By the end, Hunter had (as usual) grown bored of the task at hand and ran off to go and play the computer, but Lily really surprised me. She decorated the rest of Hunter and Ava's cookies, plus the extras I had set aside. She really took her time and I could clearly tell that she was enjoying herself.

Okay, maybe she was just enjoying all the frosting she was squirting down her throat.

After cookie decorating, it was time to start getting supper ready. Now if I was smart, I should have shared this with you before Valentines Day, but just bookmark it for next year if you're interested.

Okay, supper.

Salad.

I had Ava cut cucumber hearts using a small cookie cutter.

 

 

 

And I cut out cheese X's and O's.

 

And I really wanted a red veggie in there too, (another valentine shape from this set, that I was using) but my pregnant brain forgot to get the red pepper (or cherry tomatoes) I was debating between the two, and forgot to get them all together. I thought about adding some strawberries for color, but gave up in the end, and we had cucumber/cheese salad.

 

Fruit salad.

Because every Valentines Day has to incorporate strawberries in someway or another, I decided to cut the strawberries in the shape of hearts, add some flower cantaloupes and sprinkle with some sugar.

 

Now, this may seem really lame thing to post about, but seriously, I started cutting these strawberries individually, and then realized that there had to be an easier way to get them into this shape without wasting my time. So I will tell you how to cut them into heart shapes. If you are a gourmet chef, please skip and forgive me.

Okay, start by taking the strawberry.

 

Lop off the top. Straight across.

 

Then cut a trench like groove into the berry top.

 

Here's another angle on that.

 

Then start slicing it down the side.

 

Another shot.

 

Repeat, repeat, repeat until you have a lovely little pile of deep red strawberry hearts.

 

Top with flower (cookie cutters again) cantaloupe shapes. I was going to sprinkle them with red sugar, but I used it for something else instead... (keep reading to find out just what that was.)

 

Dessert.

Since we already had a ton of cookies, I really didn't want to make anything too much, and have lots of leftovers, which you all know I would eat, so I decided to do a cupcake dessert.

So my awesome find, this cupcake mix that makes 12 cupcakes. (found at the Dollar Store, in the States) What a perfect amount!!

 

(By the way, the box lies. I only got 10 cupcakes, and please excuse my messy liners. I had about a million thing on the go when I was doing these.)

So the idea was to make the cupcakes in advance. Frost them with some yummy light pink frosting...

 

And have them all ready to go after dinner for our very own cupcake bar. Complete with all different kinds of Valentines candy.

 

I would like to draw your attention to the right corner of this picture... who knew they made Valentines Candy Corn? How cool is that??!!

Drinks.

So I had asked what things everyone did for Valentines day, and Lynn told me about her Sprite with grenadine drink, so I thought why not. Lets give it a try.

So I took our special glasses and sugared the rim with red sprinkle sugar.

 

Then I filled them with Sprite, a splash of grenadine and garnished with a strawberry and lemon wedge.

 

Main course.

You'll have to use your imagination for this one, cause I didn't take any pictures, but then again I didn't really do anything special either. I barbecued chicken and grilled up some bacon and we had BBQ chicken/bacon sandwiches.

Dinner time!

So the last couple of things I had planned for the kids were these little buckets I had picked up at Target forever ago. I filled them with little dollar store goodies and had them waiting at their plate.

 

 

 

I also picked up the most adorable coupon book for kids.

It has the cutest little coupons inside, things like this

 
 

So instead of buying 3 of these books, I decided to do coupon day (probably a Friday) where I will pick out a coupon and my kids have the whole week to cash it in whenever they want.

And last couple of pictures from our Valentines day, is the cupcakes.

 

 

 

(Just pretend I'm not a horrible mother and there is a picture of Ava here... how she got missed, I'm not sure)

Anyways, that sums up our Valentines Day. We put the kids to bed and me and Darren watched the movie Passendale. Another great holiday here.

valentines cookies.

 

Sigh. I love Valentines Day. Mostly because every store is decorated in everything pink. And my second favorite thing to the color pink is hearts.

I LOVE hearts.

So of course everything is heart shaped and pink and lovely. Hence why I love Valentines Day so much.

So yesterday I offered to teach the Young Women's how to make pipe and flood sugar cookies. It was very low key, and they even came to my house so I wouldn't have to go anywhere. The best part was that the leader in charge had made everything. All I had to do was sit down, show them how and then create away. I had so much fun. Even though my kids were hanging off of the table and annoying me to death.

The problem now is, I don't want to eat these sweet pink treats. I just want to look at them and love them everyday. But who are we kidding, I'll have eaten at least 6 before this post even hits my blog. (3 for me, 3 for baby of course)

I did make these other Valentines cookies a couple of days ago. (I swear the frosting is pink, it just looks really dull in this picture)

 

But I just don't understand why little teddy bears would be in a Valentines sprinkle mix? I know people give bears as gifts, but it still just seems odd to me. These cookies are a cake mix one (our favorite in this family) Rainbow bit cake mix, with butter cream frosting. Yummy.

Is anyone else making super yummy pink treats? Do share.