Valentine's Fun

I love Valentine's Day! I don't know if it's the pink and the hearts or the excuse to treat those I love extra special . . . whatever the case may be, it's just so much fun. That's why this year I decided that I want to do something fun every day until Valentine's Day. Knowing me, I would start off with good intentions and then fall short. That's why I made this cute little jar.

Inside are 16 little papers with a Valentine-y thing to do written on them (we started on Saturday). Here are some ideas I found and some that I just made up:

*Make Valentine sugar cookies

*Watch a good movie about love

*Read a love/Valentine's story

*Write a Valentine/love poem

*Make a present for someone you love

*Think about ways you can show more love to those around you

*Go on a heart scavenger hunt

*Start a new Valentine's Day tradition

*Play a game with someone you love

*Plan a fun outing to do with someone you love

*Tell someone you love them

*Make a Valentine's craft

*Make and send Valentine's cards

*Give 5 compliments to someone

*Do a secret service for someone you love

*Make some Valentine's treats for your friends or neighbors

*Make a heart shaped pizza for dinner

*Make a list of things you love about someone and give it to them

*Give someone a {paper} heart attack

*Write love notes to your family

*Make a family puzzle

*Go on a "Big Kiss" treasure hunt

Here is another "countdown" idea . . . I took a lot of my ideas from her!

Pumpkin Apple Muffins/Bread

These muffins are so yummy! I made them for breakfast this week and my kids gobbled them up. I had to share.

Pumpkin Apple Muffins

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 cups sugar (I used only 1 1/2 cups. Two cups seemed like an awful lot)

1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups finely chopped peeled apples

Topping:

1/4 cup sugar

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, pumpkin spice, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl combine eggs, pumpkin and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in apples. Fill lined muffin cups until three-fourths full. For topping, combine sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbles; sprinkle 1 teaspoon over each muffin. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack.

This recipe yields 18 muffins. I made 12 muffins but instead of doing another 6 I used the rest of the batter to make a small loaf of bread (a loaf will need to bake an extra 15 minutes). The muffins got gobbled up before I could snap a picture--hence the picture of the loaf.

Enjoy!

Baby Doll Diapers

I walked into my sons room the other day and found crumpled diapers everywhere. Apparently my daughter decided that her bear needed a diaper and then another diaper and then another.

Perfectly good diapers wasted.

After a little talk about how diapers are not toys I let her help me pick some fabric from my stash and we set out to make some diapers that she could play with.

This pattern fits my daughters 12-13 inch dolls and stuffed animals.

I cut the pattern out twice. Once for the diaper and once for the lining. If you're an advanced sewer then you should know what to do from here.

- Sew right sides together, leaving an opening to turn right side out.

- Clip curves and corners. Turn. Press. Sew opening.

- Sew on Velcro.

If you're a beginning sewer and would like some great step-by-step instructions visit HERE.

So Fun!

No more ruined diapers. Phew!

Heart Garland

I can't believe it's already time to start thinking about Valentine's Day. Ready or not here it comes I suppose . . .

My daughter loves holidays and is always telling me the run down, "First it's Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Valentine's Day, then summer time . . ." She has the whole year planned out. So to get in the Valentine's spirit she helped me make this simple heart garland to hang up in her playroom.

I used this template to cut out the hearts.

After they were all cut out we looped them together and then taped the point of the heart closed.

Hanging there to bring us some Valentine's cheer.

Silhouettes

The empty wall in my daughters room has been nagging me to fill it for I don't know how long. I've always loved the classic look of silhouettes so when when my sister made some silhouettes of her three boys for their room it sparked an idea.

This was one of those projects that I wanted to pay the minimal on. So, with fingers crossed I headed over to the dollar store, and with the most incredible luck I came across these beautiful frames.

I went through my stash of scrapbook paper and pulled out some coordinating colors and then printed the silhouettes right onto the paper from my computer.

Wall filled. Task completed. Money spent? $3!

Oh, how I love them . . .

Felt Sugar Cookies

My mom has been cleaning out her house and has been sending me a lot of my old things as a result. Among those things were some of my old dolls from when I was a girl. My daughter spied them in my closet and asked if we could play with them sometime. I was kind of surprised since my daughter has never really been into dolls. I decided that if we were going to play with dolls we would go all out. I pulled out my old tea set from when I was a girl, got out the dolls and we had our very first little tea party. My daughter had so much fun! She loved it so much that we had about ten tea parties that day and went through about half a box of Nilla Waffers.

I quickly decided that if we were going to be having this many tea parties we were going to need a more permanent cookie. I came up with these tasty looking sugar cookies made out of felt.

Here's what you'll need to make your own:
- Felt
- Batting
- Small beads (for sprinkles)
- Pattern

• To make one cookie first cut out two of the large circle in off-white felt.

• Then cut out the batting using the smaller circle and sandwich the felt on either side of the batting.

• Next I used my sewing machine and did a zig-zag stitch all the way around. Don't have a sewing machine? Don't worry. You can simply hand sew around it or do a blanket stitch if you know how.

• To finish it off I cut out the frosting in pink, glued it on and then glued the beads on top for sprinkles.

Now we always have cookies on hand for a spur of the moment tea party!

Knock-Off Wood

This is exciting. You're going to love this. Are you ready?

Yesterday I came across a blog called Knock-Off Wood. I can't pull myself away from it. Ana has created building plans for the most wonderful things and she shares them with us. You can have them . . . for free! I've looked through her building plans and she makes it all seem so easy. I think I might actually give a try at building something.

Here are a few of the amazing building plans she shares!

Playhouse Loft Bed
(Isn't that incredible! What child wouldn't love this?)

Activity Table

Kids Storage Chair

Dollhouse Bookshelf

Go check out her blog--and while you're there you can enter this great giveaway!

(Giveaway ends January 12, 2009)

Crayon Roll

I made these crayon rolls for my nephews this last Christmas. They were fun to make--and a fun gift for anytime of the year.

Go here for a great tutorial on how to make one.

Memory Gift Books

Now that Christmas is over I can share some of the homemade Christmas gifts we did this last year. (I didn't want to spoil the surprise beforehand in case the gift recipients were looking :)

I love homemade gifts and I love helping my children created their own one of a kind gift that no one else could give but them.

This one I'm very excited to share with you. My daughter made memory books for her Grandparents for Christmas presents. I love how they turned out.

I came across these plain book covers at a local shop. They were only $0.25!

I had to get a little creative and create the inside of the book. I used card stock for the backing and legal sized paper for the pages. The legal sized paper turned out to be a little bit shorter than I was hoping--but what are you going to do? I put the pages all together and used my good ol' sewing matching to bind them. I then used modge podge to glue the card stock to the book cover.

After assembling the book my daughter drew pictures of memories she has had with her Grandma and Grandpa. She's quite the little artist and had so much fun documenting her memories.

When she was done we put her cute pink hand print on the front and wrote the title. She was so
excited to send her homemade gifts. I think it made a sweet keepsake.

Printable Thank-You Cards

Thirty Handmade Days is sharing some darling printable thank-you cards HERE.

Print them off and use them up.

Just wanted to pass it on.