a little love & chocolate fondue

Olivia cutting out little cookie dough hearts.

That's Nina, even though the apron says, "Hannah."

Some Valentines we made with lollipops.

Nina's special Valentine she made for her teacher, Mrs. Jackson.

A little project I started last year, and finally finished this year. Tiny felt hearts with button flowers and embroidered stems. I stitched on a loop of ribbon for hanging on dresser drawers or doorknobs, just to spread a little love.

How was your Valentine's Day? Ours was simple and fun. Nina and Olivia helped me make our traditional heart-shaped sugar cookies a few days early, and we packed them for our weekend with friends at the cabin. At the cabin we decorated them with pink frosting, candy hearts and red hots {my favorite on sugar cookies!}. Over the weekend we also had our usual Valentine's breakfast of heart-shaped waffles with strawberries and cream.

The Valentines we made were super easy, super cute, and super inexpensive. I saw some other cute ideas here and here, but we'll just save those for another year.

It wouldn't be Valentine's Day without a little chocolate fondue, would it? Some ideas for dipping are strawberries, bananas, oranges, kiwi, pieces of good french bread, pretzels, marshmallows, graham crackers, Oreos, coconut macaroons, and cinnamon hearts. Here's my favorite {and easy!} recipe.

Chocolate Fondue

1 cup half and half {or cream}

12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

In a small pot, warm the half and half over medium heat until it begins to simmer. Add the chocolate chips and whisk until the chocolate is smooth and fully incorporated. Mmmm....start dipping!

ben's valentine box

Ben made this all on his own, and as you can see he won "Most Creative" in his class!

"so cute valentines"

Nina and I put these little blooms together for her preschool class.

"These are SO CUTE Valentines, Mom!" she kept saying.

robot parade

Meep-zorp!

The lazy side of me tried to take the easy way out with Valentines this year and brought home a bag of packaged candy hearts. However, the kids were practically depressed about that. "Can't we make some? Pleeease?"

Oh man, okay.

So we flipped through my trusty Family Fun magazine and found these cute little guys (only we ditched the arms). I traced the templates, and Ben and Hannah did the rest. Yay for big kids! I hardly had to do anything. It was super easy, and the kids are so excited to take them to school tomorrow.

Valentine Pics

Valentine's Day

We found this fun idea for classroom valentines in Family Fun magazine...iPods made from Sweetheart boxes!  AWESOME!  The kids were so excited to make them and take them to school.  Ben even came up to me while we were making them and hugged me so tight, "I love you Mom!" he said.  That made it worth it...We didn't start working on these until 8:30 the night before, and Ben and Hannah helped wrap and glue the papers on, but I was up until 12:30 finishing the little ear bud/string thingies! Dang it!  It was one of those things where I thought, "Well, I just have to finish it since we started it."  The next day I was helping with the party in Hannah's class, and my friend Shandra was there too.  "What's this about iPods?" she asked.  Apparently, the Hannah had been hyping it up at school all week, telling all her friends, "I'm giving you an iPod for Valentine's!"  Ha ha!

On Friday afternoon, Clayton walked through the front door with a big vase of red roses :)

Yesterday morning was cozy with heart waffles, strawberries and cream, bacon and orange juice, and big fluffy snowflakes twirling down outside.  Breakfast was getting cold and Clayton still hadn't come up from working downstairs, so I went down there and said, "Are you in this family?" (a quote from Matilda, a family favorite).  

After breakfast, Clayton took Hannah to get her ears pierced with Mary and Spencer, but she was too scared and got some magnetic earrings instead.  So did Nina.  Then the girls all played at Spence and Em's house while Clay and Spencer took Ben to the shooting range (what a sweet little Valentine's activity, huh?).  

Last night our good friends Chris and Natalie offered to watch the kids so we could go out on a date.  They are so nice to us!  We grabbed some yummy dinner at Pei Wei since everywhere else had a 2 hour wait.  Olivia was fussy, but the food was good!  We window shopped at the Gateway...mainly at Anthropologie, my favorite! And I love how it smells in there.  Then to a movie (Coraline---very weird...don't waste your time or take your kids).  After that,  I thought we were heading home, but we ended up at the Marriott downtown.  "We're staying here tonight!" Clayton said.  I didn't believe him! But he wasn't kidding.  We stayed up until 1:30 watching "Sleepless in Seattle" on TV.  Olivia slept on the other bed in the room.  She looked so tiny with that big bed all to herself!

 Yeah, so Chris and Natalie had the kids overnight and even got them dressed and ready for church this morning!  They are the best, and they are due for a weekend away so they better let us babysit soon!  It was so nice just to be able to spend some time together, Clayton's been so busy lately we barely have time to talk during the week.

Valentine Cookie Time!

Valentine cookies are a tradition at my house, and one of the only times during the year when we actually make sugar cookies.  As my friend Janae said, "They are a labor of love!"  I should make them more often though since they are so fun to decorate and eat!  We baked these last Sunday, and then our good friends Jeff and Janae came over in the evening with their three kids and helped frost them and load on the candy hearts.  It was so good to see those guys, we hadn't seen them in 3 years, which is so crazy since we only live 10 minutes apart.  Unfortunately, the cookies were gone before I had a chance to get any pictures of the final masterpieces!  And believe me, they were masterpieces!  :)