valentine's day

happy valentine's day!

it's not a big holiday around our house, but we try to make the day just a little bit special.

we started out the day with a special breakfast of cinnamon rolls, eggs, and strawberries. i made them last night from this recipe. they are low-carb, gluten, and sugar free. the first batch was a terrible disappointment. they smelled delicious, but were as hard as rocks! i baked them too long and also learned that i needed to add more almond flour than the recipe says. the second batch turned out better. not perfect, but good enough that we were able to enjoy them for breakfast this morning. i put heart stickers on toothpicks and stuck them in the cinnamon rolls to add a festive feel this morning.

we exchanged valentine's cards. always homemade at our house.

and the other day i made some truffles, because i knew the day wouldn't be complete without chocolate. (the recipe is from a book i recently got from the library: sensational stevia desserts, by lisa jobs). they were quite a lot of work, but they are delicious and definitely satisfy a desire for chocolate.

happy valentine's day

valentine tree

i promised to post the other valentine's day decoration today, so here goes...

i was sad that there was a large empty space in our house where the christmas tree was, so i decided to put a valentine's day tree together. i loaded a bundled baby into the hiking backpack and hunted around in the woodsy area next to our house to find the branches. i had a large vase in the basement left over from a huge flower arrangement from several years ago (i knew it would come in handy someday!), so i filled it with rocks and arranged the branches into the tree.

 

i put the ornaments together in the morning...some red ornaments from the christmas decorations, a glittery heart i got when i was a hallmark employee in high school, and several ornaments that i made.

 in the front of the arrangement LOVE is spelled out with ornaments i made from buttons, scrabble tiles, pipe cleaners, and ribbon. i wrapped red ribbon around the pipe cleaner (it was brown), trimmed the pipe cleaner to the size i needed, put it through the holes in the button and glued the scrabble tile onto it.

the garland was a very quick project. i simply threaded a needle with white yarn, and sewed through some pom poms, and red, pink, and white buttons.

i had some left over candy-cane pipecleaners that i had been planning on using as gift decorations but didn't. they were in the shape of candycanes, but i just bent them into heart shapes and hung them on branches. 

the snowflakes are from a thrift store...i found a bag of them a while back and have used them for several different projects. the following photo shows one of the ornaments i made from the watercolor hearts i made yesterday. i used glue dots to give it a 3-D effect and taped some ribbon on the back.

the valentine's tree is the perfect decoration for our living room. i love how it turned out! how do you decorate for valentine's day?

valentine's day decor

i wasn't very motivated to take our christmas decorations down this year. in fact, i was still enjoying them. until today. i took them all down...except for the mistletoe...we decided to leave that up for another day or two. seriously...who doesn't love another excuse to kiss? i'm sure we will totally gross our kids out when they are teenagers. oh well. anyway...

we aren't big celebrators of valentine's day around here. we always exchange cards and maybe we are extra lovey-dovey that day, but we've never made it a point to have big celebrations. we didn't even have any decorations for valentine's day...until today.

when i was a kid, we had a valentine box (a shoebox my mom covered in red polka dot wrapping paper and cut a slit in the top of), and a box full of valentine making supplies, and the weeks before valentine's day were spent using way too much glue to create cards for each member of the family and then slipping the cards into the shoebox. after dinner on valentine's day, the shoebox was opened and valentine's were passed out. my dad always slipped a store-bought card in for each of us, and my mom always made some kind of special little goodie bag. it was a special tradition that we plan to continue with our family.

taking down the christmas decorations today had me feeling a bit blue...so i dug into my stash and crafted an assortment of decorations to brighten our home. i was fortunate to have my hubby home for part of the day, and a babe who took a {rare} long nap.

first, i made this heart garland to hang above a window. i cut hearts out of three different colors of felt and sewed through them with embroidery thread. simple.

i made another window garland. i think i saw this idea somewhere a while ago, but i honestly don't remember where it was...i don't remember it being a valentine's day idea, but i am using it as one. i had a packet of thin, red binding left over from some other project, so i used that. i took some medium sized paper doilies, folded them in half, and simply glued them to the binding. i let them dry and hung it up. it turned out to be so cute. (this photo definitely doesn't do it justice).

there was one more {bigger} valentine craft/decoration i created today. this next photo is a hint. i will post the completed project tomorrow. stay tuned!