Happy Valentine's Day! Treats!

Happy Valentine's Day!

What are your plans for Valentine's day? N and I are planning on going to dinner and a movie tomorrow. There is a great theater near us that serves food while you watch the movie.

I got together with an amiga (you can see her blog here) the other day to bake some treats for Valentine's Day.

We definitely went over board with the amount of treats that we made! I went over to her house at 4:30 and left a little after midnight. We took a few breaks for grocery shopping and dinner but spent the majority of our time in the kitchen.

First we started making the cake balls from Bakerella. They were supposed to be made with red velvet cake but when we couldn't find that at the grocery store we bought devil's food cake instead. They turned out pretty good - very tasty. I think I just need to work on my dipping and decorating skills. :-) The recipe said it would make 45 - 50 balls....we made 84. That means we each got 42 each!

We covered half in white almond bark and half in chocolate almond bark.

We made some of the almond bark pink and tried to decorate them...

Censational Girl posted about making chocolate covered caramels and they looked amazing so we decided to make them. The original recipe was from Smitten Kitchen. After gathering all of the ingredients we realized that the original recipe was for salted chocolate caramels...not chocolate covered caramels. We decided to stick with the recipe and made chocolate caramels. They were interesting but good. N decided that out of the three treats I brought home these are his favourite.

The last thing we made were brownie/cookies. This recipe is also from Bakerella. The recipe called for regular chocolate chip cookies but when we didn't see that at the grocery store we decided to use oatmeal chocolate chip cookies instead. It turned out great and N and I have each had one as a breakfast dessert for the past two days. :-) Mmm.

Valentine's Day - Chocolate of the Month Gift

N got me these pink roses a few days early so I gave his gift on Friday.

I tried to think of something N would really like for Valentine's day and I immediately thought about chocolate. He loves, loves, chocolate. 

I decided to get him a "membership" to a Chocolate of the Month Club. And by "membership" I mean... I'll be buying him a new chocolate bar at the start of each month for the rest of the year. 

When I gave him his first delivery with a chocolate bar for January and February he thought it was "the real deal" (a real chocolate of the month club) until he started reading my job answers to the frequently asked question page that was included in the envelope. :-)

I designed a membership card and a punch card and laminated them both so they looked professional. Packing tape worked great for lamination. I used the font Nite Club which I downloaded from dafont.com.

Front of membership card:

 

Back of membership card:

Front of punch card:

 

I even put the months in Spanish on the back just for fun.

Next I made a welcome letter... (PDF of letter)

 and a page of frequently asked questions (PDF of frequently asked questions).

I put the letter, frequently asked questions, membership card and punch car in an envelope. 

I went to the co-op and bought the first two chocolate bars. I was holding a handful of chocolate bars trying to decide when a man came up and commented on how many chocolate bars I had. I explained that my husband has a chocolate problem (addiction) and I was buying him some for Valentine's Day. He laughed and recommended two bars. I thanked him for his recommendation and bought the two bars he suggested.

January's Chocolate bar

February's Chocolate bar

As an added bonus, this bar has a love poem inside. :-)

I put the bars in a box, wrapped it with a paper bag and put a sticker on it. 

Then I used ribbon to tie the box and envelope together to give to N. 

 He loved the gift and is excited to receive a new chocolate bar every month for a year. I'm excited for him to share the chocolates with me....:-)

I have uploaded the membership card, punch card and letterhead. For some reason the text on the membership card looks pixely...it didn't look like that before I uploaded it so I'm not sure what happened.

PDF of the letterhead.

Front of card.

Back of card.

 

Punch card.

Craft: Cards

I started making some cards to go in my magazine envelopes that I just made (see previous post). I'm hoping to get some time to make more this weekend though that might not happen. Whenever I get time I'll be sure to post picture.

Supplies: card stock, stamps, magazines, shape templates

I had card stock that was 8 1/2'' x 11''. I cut each piece in half (8 1/2'' by 5' 1/2'') and then folded that paper in 1/2. It fit perfect in the envelopes that I made. I used a bone folder to score and fold the card stock.

I printed out various shapes on card stock and cut them out. I'm trying to think of more shapes - any suggestions? I'm going to try to find a simple tree and bird silhouette.

Then I traced the shapes onto magazine pages and cut them out. I just used double sided tape to tape the shape to the card. I already had alphabet stamps so I used those to stamp words on the insides. I need to get better at stamping the words but I'm happy with how they turned out.

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This is my favourite one.

Green Craft: Envelopes made with magazines

I have a stack of old magazines and was trying to think of ways to use them. I'm making a list of magazine crafts - my list so far: envelopes (check), cards (in progress) and gift bows. Do you have any other ideas? Links to tutorials?

Making the envelopes was super easy to do and I've already started making cards to go in them. :-)


Supplies: Envelope template, magazine, scissors, scorer (to score the folds)

I made a template for an envelopes that will fit 1/4 piece of paper - so the cards I will make will be half a sheet of paper folded in half. You can download my template here. I printed it onto card stock and cut it out.

 

Then I went through my magazines and pulled out pages that I liked.

  

I put the template on the back of the page and traced it - I did not trace on the side I wanted out the outside of the envelope.

 

 I had a stack of magazine pages ready to be folded into envelopes.

 

I used a straight edge and a scorer to score the four fold lines (you can see the fold lines in the template).

 

First I folded up the two side flaps.Then the top and bottom flap

 

I put double-sided tape on both of the side flaps and then folded the bottom flap up - making sure that the paper was smooth once it was taped together.

 

Next you just need to fold the top flap down and you have an envelope. Once you are ready to mail the envelope you can either use double-sided tape or a nice sticker to seal it shut.

 

When I mail the envelopes I plan on writing or printing the address on a white mailing label and sticking it to the front of the envelope.

Here is the stack of envelopes I made...

 

and here are some of my favourites.

   

 I have a coffee problem. Mmm coffee.

Envelope Template





http://secretpieshoppe.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-02-10T21%3A31%3A00-06%3A00&max-results=8

Update: PDF tutorials posted

PDF tutorials have been created and posted for the following projects. 

The link to the PDF is found at the bottom of each post.

Valentine's Day Wall Art

 

 Felt Heart Wreath

Cloth Snack Bag

Cloth Coaster

Craft: Fabric Flower Earrings

I had some small scraps of material left over from my quilt and wanted to try to find a way to use them. I saw fabric flower earrings on Happy Together and decided to make them. I made them a little differently so here is how I made them.

Supplies: Earring backs, hot glue gun (or other glue), pearl beads (or other small beads), fabric scraps, small button to trace

First I traced the button on the fabric and cut out circles. You can see how tiny my scraps were - you don't need much fabric at all. This scrap, not even 3'' by 2'' made 10 circles.

You'll need 7 circles for each earring - 14 circles per pair of earrings.

The earring starts with one circle. This will be the bottom layer of the earring.

 

 Fold two circles in half - with the right-side on the outside.

Put them on top of the bottom-layer circle - side by side so they completely cover the bottom-layer circle and create a circle of their own.  Sew them onto the bottom-layer circle.I just sewed in two spots near the middle. You can use the same piece of thread to sew all of the layers on so make sure it's long enough.

Take the four leftover circles and fold them in half and then in half again, right-side facing out.

Place one on the earring circle and sew it to the layers (one full circle, two 1/2 circles) at the very point....this picture might make more sense.

Grab another folded circle and place it right across from the first one. Sew it to the earring layers at the point.

In the same way, sew the remaining two folded circles between the already sewen ones - so that all four 1/4 circles make one circle. Tie off the thread.

Now the tough part is done. Sew your pearl (or any bead) to the center of the flower.

The two finished flowers.

Next I used a hot glue gun to glue the earring backs to the back of the flower.

 

Three completed pairs! I used a dime for the grey flowers but thought it was too bit so I used a small button for the red and blue flowers and liked them much better.

PDF Tutorial

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