our heart day.

Our Valentines day was pretty normal. Boys to school, Baby and I to yoga, and then to grocery store. I did decide that I wanted to do a fun dinner for my family. My boys love to eat. And they eat a lot. So I started by pulling all the decorations from around the house to decorate my table. Fun jelly hearts stuck to the table, heart garland, and all the sweet crafts the boys made. Then I used our regular white plates on some fun stripe place mats. We had steak, that WorkinMan made on the grill, baked potatoes, and fresh garlic green beans. I also made hand dipped chocolate covered strawberries. This is a special treat that the boys love! I also made my own chocolate mixture that was soooo yummy. I melted milk chocolate chips, vanilla, and salt together and then dipped the strawberries. They were fab. We even saved 5 for us for today. :)  The boys loved this dinner and all the little extras. It really didn't take any more time than the normal dinner I make and they were so appreciative. I didn't spend anything except on the little buckets and candy. Everything else we had. They kept saying "thank you so much mommy!" It was great.

fun.




On each of the boys plates I put a little bucket from the Target dollar section, some coke bottle gummies and a little hand made treat. I made them hearts out of felt, stuffed with brown rice and blanket stitched around the edge. You microwave them for a few seconds and they get toasty warm and cuddly.  Each boy got a different color.

warming hearts.

The boys also got a sweet surprise when they got cards from my parents. Mom had given me them before she left for Amsterdam. The boys were so excited that they had remembered such a special time.

Our heart day was pretty simple but oh so sweet. Time with family is always time well spent. Hope yours was lovely and surrounded by those you love.

Little Mama.

happy valentines day.

janesays

I am just poping in to say Happy Heart Day to all our friends and family! We have had a lovely evening together as a family. Two parties down today, one more to go tomorrow. I will post tomorrow and show you all the fun stuff we did and made. Hope you all had a lovely love day!

Little Mama

thank you and some valentine decor.

Thanks everyone for your comments and ideas for decorating my mantel. I think the key was finding something to cover the cords coming from the TV. I searched and thought and thought some more. Tried a few things and then came up with the solution. An old metal street sign I picked up at a flea market years ago.

Placing this sign here helped solve my main problem. After that I could concentrate more on what I like instead of what I needed to hide.  I got some great ideas. I loved my dads idea of collecting old colorful books and placing up there as if they had just been laid down. Really great! I will definitely use that one. For now I wanted to go with celebrating Valentines Day. We love to celebrate in this house and love to decorate for it! I pulled some fun red and white things together. Made a heart garland out of felt ( idea from Fresh and Fun).  And pulled out my white heart frame with all three boys hospital pictures in it. The little red and white vase is a favorite Goodwill find, I love fawns, and a decoupaged red and white polka dot bowl. Things I love.  So this is how it is at present and we like it.

As I said, we love to decorate for holidays. So we are bound to have a few homemade things around. Those are always the best! First up is an idea I modified from http://www.creativejewishmom.com/ She had done this idea with snowflake shapes. We used hearts for Valentines Day.

For this craft, we cut hearts out of cardboard. We used an empty cracker box. Line your heart with glue and lay down pieces of yarn. Pretty simple. We really liked this craft and even the Baby could do it, with a little help with the glue. We also did this craft at our last weekend at my parents cabin this winter. So this craft is special to us. You can also let your little ones color them. When we were done we hung these in out large picture window from yarn. They turn with any slight breeze. Very nice little decoration.

SportsBoy made this heart to hang over our dinner table. So sweet.

We also like to make a "tree" for whatever holiday we are in. We wrapped some sticks from our yard in colorful yarn. These stay in this pitcher year round. Sometimes they have lovely things hanging from them, sometimes not. They are pretty either way. Right now they have handmade hearts hanging from them.

Tie one end of your yarn to your stick and wrap until you want to stop. I left some bare in some spots and some I covered the whole way. This is a great way to add some fun pops of color.

The cute heart garland on the mantle was fun to make. I cut hearts out of felt and sewed them together on my machine. Very easy and so happy. This idea originally came from http://www.freshandfun.blogspot.com/ Lots of cute decor on her blog.  We will use this garland year after year and might leave it up for awhile even after Valentines Day. It's just so happy. So thats about all. Thanks for stopping by!

Little Mama.