Valentine Count Down Day Two--Spice It Up

Oh come on this isn't THAT kinda site

My hubs-and is the apple of MY eye

inspiration found here
Thank you to:

this idea borrowed and stolen but changed from:

http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2012/01/14-days-of-valentines-with-free.html

February 1st--All You Need Is Love Day 1

left this in his truck so he can find in the morning ;)

this idea borrowed and stolen from:

http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2012/01/14-days-of-valentines-with-free.html

&

http://kimskandykreations.blogspot.com/2012/01/10-valentine-party-food-ideas.html

Valentine's Day Love Station

After seeing several blogs that I came across doing the whole "oh lets have a FUN and crafty Valentines Day!" thing.  I decided that my eternal quest to not be the suckiest mom on the planet must have some part of this.

One of those blogs I found via pintrest.  oh how I love pintrest.  BTW (by the way) I just have to get this out of the way..My name is Melisa and I am a pinholic.

any who back to the whole fun and crafty Valentine's Day thing.  This blog:

http://andersonfamilycrew.blogspot.com/2011/02/emily-did-something-crafty-holla.html

had some really cute mailboxes, and I have been searching for cutie pie mailboxes for a month.  The only thing I could find were some flimsy foam ones at the Walmart.  for $5.  uh I don't think so. I am way to practical to spend $30 on foam.  especially for 15 days a year.  So we and by we I mean I decided to have the kids make their own heart shaped "pockets".  easy peasy!

Step 1:  get 2 sheets pink or red construction paper, fold in half width-wise, and draw half a heart using the fold as the middle of the heart. then cut out the hearts.  easiest if you do both pages at the same time (fold together)

Step 2:  glue the bottom edges of the two hearts together to make a pocket or envelope. We folded down the top layer on ours.

Step 3:  the kids all taped theirs on their bedrooms doors after decorating of course.

happened to have some Valentine's themed containers too

We have gone to a Valentine party with friends every year and give each other gifts at this party so we have a ton of little valentiney things.  Some of it is even child appropriate so I got together what we had in a basket and added some paper, stamps, ink, stickers, etc.  The kids can now make each other daily messages of love and kindness to put in the pockets.  We also had a little lesson on kindness and are "playing" a secret cupid game where they have to do an act of service secretly for someone in the family every day.  There are special hearts for people to fill out for their secret cupid fun.

I used all the leftover Valentine's that the kids have had years past.  Quite the variety: Harry Potter, Narnia, bugs, MonsterTrucks, and more.  Quite funny when I pulled them out my oldest daughter who is at the prime of her tweens practically jumped on the Harry Potter ones.  She has a few friends that are Obsessed with HP, and she is starting in on her teenage crushes too.  Altho she did really like watching Prince Caspian when it came out, and not just for Aslan. ;)

Put a sign above the station to remind us all....

We got this sign as a gift from some friends some years ago

That's what it is all about.

A year of Achievement days

Grape Juice and weekend craftiness

Ha!  This weekend I got my craft on!  With a little help from Fabulous Friday/Super Saturday and some ornery starlings.  I will apologize for picture quality...have yet to get a new camera so I am still using cell phone pictures.
When I got home from work on Thursday, I was met with some depressing news...

The evil little starlings had been having a feast in our back yard.

  Oh and the real kicker...I am relatively certain that these are the same little beasts that we LET build a nest in our attic, poop all over our rain gutter and cars, and in general be a loud obnoxious nuisance.

Nice way to repay our hospitality!

So Aaron and I clippers in tow went outside to survey the damage and determined that we would have to harvest early...that is if we wanted to harvest at all. Next year I am investing in netting and maybe a nice bb gun.  We lost at least 1/4 of our crop to those darn birds.

We wanted to wait until the first frost to harvest...then they would have all been ripe

Yummm....this is just the first batch...all in all we got nearly three gallons of pure sugar free grape juice.  All right that is not entirely honest...you know me I WILL be adding sugar ;)

Super cute fabric flowers that I made for some undisclosed Christmas gifts...I have lots of nieces!

Cute little wooden pumpkins...

makes me want to get out all my fall decors

Isnt' this head band soo cute!  I made it!  Me!  and bonus the flowers can come off to clip in hair all on their own!

New pics to put up in the kitchen...when I get that wall up I will take a pic of it and post...we painted the wood and mod podged these pics...you can't see but the temple pic is personalized with our names and anniversary and the Christus pic has a scripture on it.

Look! Look! Look! at what I did!

I found the idea here...SugarBeeCraftEdition--snowball skirt.  I didn't put near as much effort into it as she did, but still I did it!  I might go back later this week and add rosettes to the skirts, who knows....I think that for my first attempt at a wearable sewing project things turned out quite well.  I do confess I have made some pretty cute fleece pjs, but fleece is very forgiving.  There are plenty of mistakes but I am not going to show those off ;)  and if anyone says anything to me about the mistakes I can just say well did you make anything for me...NO...so there! 

I WANT THIS!!

I WANT THIS!!!

 

If you do too go to these websites to win one...

 

http://houseofsmiths.blogspot.com/2011/01/silhouette-craft-cutter-machine.html

 

http://www.theshabbychiccottage.net/2011/01/silhouette-giveaway-and-ah-maz-ing-deal.html