Mini Heart Bunting Valentine Cards & One For You

Each year the kids and I have fun making valentine cards to give away to friends and family and in addition to this we decided that it would be fun to participate in a valentine card swap this year as well that will provide us with oodles of mail which is just plain fun anytime.

What I hadn't anticipated was making 38 cards! Yes, that was definitely more than I ever could have imagined but creating things with the kids is always fun :)

I love making bunting and my daughter always wants to use my sewing machine so I thought I'd combine the two together and so our little mini heart bunting cards came to life :)

We started by cutting out little rectangles of burlap fabric slightly smaller than the face of our cards and pulled out a few threads from each of the sides to give it a frayed appearance. Then between the two of us we traced over 120 miniature little hearts onto the paper side of some Heat n Bond paper that we would later iron onto an assortment of red fabrics.

With our hearts traced, ironed onto our fabrics, cut out and then permanently affixed to the top of our burlap rectangles in a semi circle formation it was time to get stitching!

Using a nice bright red thread my daughter stitched on the string for our bunting so that it no longer looked like our hearts were just floating all alone finishing the mini heart bunting...

And then she took each of the finished burlap rectangles and stitched each of them to the front side of each of our little note cards. So much more simpler than mucking around with glue and then waiting for everything to dry! Plus getting to use mama's sewing machine is always such a treat :)

I just love how they turned out with their little red stitching from the sewing machine and I was so happy that my daughter had so much fun sewing them. Originally I thought that she would maybe make it through half of the cards we had to make but she just wanted to keep sewing and sewing which actually turned out to be a good thing because we now have extras to share with you!

So if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below and make sure you leave me a way to get in contact with you for your address :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my happy heart stitcher *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina

I've Got A Teenager!!

On Monday my son turned 13!!!
I can't believe I have a teenager in the house already. It sort of makes me feel old *grin*. On Saturday he had a couple of friends over for the day and we had his big cake, party food and presents and on Monday the actual day of his birthday we kept it pretty low key. I made his favorite meal of hamburgers and as a joke I stuck a candle in the top of one of the burgers and sang happy birthday to him as I brought it out to him for lunch :) You should have seen the grin on his face. I'm actually looking forward to his teenage years as it brings a whole new set of experiences and he is such a great kid that it can only get better :)

Today we all worked on our Valentine's day cards that we are making for a swap we are participating in. My daughter traced out hearts on some heat n bond paper and then we transferred it to the burlap rectangles above which are going to make the front panel of our cards.

I just LOVE all of the red fabrics and can't wait to show you how they turn out. Last year we made cute little handprint heart cards and we shared our extras with some of you lovely readers and we're going to do it again! So make sure and check back as I will have 5 of our new cards ready to hit the mail just for you :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Valentine Handprint Cards & One For You

Valentine's day is just around the corner and every year we make something special to give to Omi and Opa. Last year we made valentine paper bag books and this year I thought it would fun to get really messy and make handprint heart cards :)

No kid can resist having their hands completely coated in paint!



The trick is to get them to keep their hands on the paper and not their faces, walls, chairs, oh and hair... hair is a really good one to keep sticky paint covered hands out of *grin*. Why is it that as soon as they know that they aren't supposed to scratch a body part it becomes mysteriously itchy??

With our watercolor paper folded in half and each hand thoroughly covered in red paint we then placed them onto the paper doing our best to keep our thumbs slightly bent and our pointer fingers touching to make a lovely handprint heart :) To be fair we did a couple of practice runs on scrap paper before doing our 'good' cards so that we could perfect our heart making technique :)

One tip before getting your little one to stick their hands to the paper is to make sure that you have your card upside down or the opposite way that you would want it to stand when it is complete. That way your heart will display right side up. We made that mistake the first time and when we stood the card upright to dry we realized that the heart was actually upside down *grin*. Still cute but my little guy was not happy his heart didn't look quite right!

To give each of our cards a little shimmer we sprinkled glitter over the wet paint and then using our alphabet stamps my daughter stamped 'Be Mine' and 'I ♥ U' in the center of the handprint hearts for sweet little Valentine messages :)

I just love how cute they look all lined up on the table drying :)

We got a little carried away with making handprints and ended up with more cards than we actually need so if you or your children would like a little surprise Valentine card sent to you in the mail just let me now in the comments below :)

The first five commenters will have one personally sent to you by my little heart handprint creators *grin*.

All of the Valentine cards have now been spoken for :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Valentine Party

I had been planning to put together a little Valentine's party for the kids but my best laid plans went a little sideways *grin* and I fell behind on the preparations. If you happen to follow me on twitter you may have read my crazy message at 1am on valentine's morning when I was actually baking up a storm until about 2 am while I should have only been dreaming of cupcakes & cookies! LOL



Two dozen cupcakes heaped in pink icing and another couple dozen sugar cookies later I was ready to finish my Valentine's cards for them! Haha, did I mention I was seriously running behind?!

I had found the cutest little pattern for a crocheted heart garland and thought that they would make super sweet handmade cards so I only worked the first 2 rounds of the pattern and they were the perfect size to be hot glue gunned onto the cardstock for little ' I ♥ You ' valentines :) I tucked one on Hubby's coffee maker for him to find in the morning and off to bed I went to catch a few zzz's before I would be forced to open my eyes again *grin*.

All of my late night work paid off and everyone was thrilled to find a tin of sugar cookies, icing and sprinkles waiting for them after breakfast :)

You know it was one heck of a good decorating party if your participants are wearing more icing than the cookies and my little 3 year old was a true testament to that! I think that I'm the only one brave enough to eat his cookies to. There was an awful lot of licking going on during the whole affair. LOL

While they decorated I cut out little tea party sandwiches :) Heart shaped peanut butter & banana bites, scalloped cucumber bites all arranged around a stunning bouquet of red marshmallow roses *grin*.

Oh heck it was just one big sugar fest!

Thank goodness the sun was shining and I could send all three of my sugar pops outdoors to burn off some of that buzz on their bikes! LOL

Hope you all had a lip smacking good Valentine's Day to :)

~ Rosina

Valentine Party

Yesterday we had our little Valentine party and it was so much fun! The kids had loads of special valentines that they had been secretly working on for Omi & Opa and we all went up for lunch at their house along with a yummy dessert :) When I was a little girl my mom used to buy these chocolate wafers making a super sweet whipped cream covered dessert with them. I hadn't thought of them for ages until I ran across them again on Little Window Shoppe's blog in a great variation of the original recipe, stacking them upright instead and topping it with a maraschino cherry :) Just perfect for Valentine's Day!

This is my lovely valentine that I received from my son.... so cute :)

~ Rosina

Valentine's Day Tree

Every year the kids and I decorate a cute little tree with all sorts of bunnies and Easter eggs for Easter and this year I thought that it would be fun if we had a Valentine's Day Tree.



There are so many cute valentine crafts but for some reason we have never really put a lot of thought into it before. We always make handmade valentines to give to each other with sweet little sayings inside and waaay to much glitter, but a couple of months ago I actually got really ambitious and made a plan to do something special :)



I bought some regular semi-gloss white paint in a spray can, found a suitable branch to pluck off of our dormant snowball tree outside the back door, gave it a good dosing of paint and hung it by the wood fire to dry. I then filled an aluminum pail with rocks and planted our new valentine tree inside :)



Previously the kids and I had started making cute little handmade felt hearts in an assortment of styles, using embroidery floss, pearls, buttons and more to make each one of the a unique creation.



We thought it was a bit bare with just the felt hearts so we started to raid my craft cupboards finding cute little painted birds in red to boot, and some vintage reproduction valentine's cards that I had just picked up. They are the sweetest things with flocked velvet on them, reminding me so much of when I was a little girl.



We set the entire thing down on some red crepe paper adding more valentine cards, and a another felt heart with a crocheted trim inside the pail :)

I don't know whey we didn't do this years ago!

~Rosina