Valentine Card Party

The girls and I hosted a fun event at our house this weekend. A mother daughter Valentine Card Party.
We laid out all kinds of supplies for girls and moms. The premise is to make a card(s) or gift tag for someone special.
We set the girls table with simple materials and the moms got to use more intricate ones.
We also had everyone bring their favorite dessert freeing me up from doing all the cooking.
The afternoon was filled with fun,creativity and chocolate!

Valentines Boxes

Small but sweet teacher gifts.

Most of the project consisted of using decoupage (messy fun),cutting shapes and using a kid low temp hot glue gun. I didn't record the process step by step as I am still a bit reluctant to not help both girls without the distraction of my taking pictures when using the hot glue gun.

The boxes and papers are all available at Michael's all the rick rack and ribbon comes from JoAnn fabrics. Low temp kid glue guns are also available at JoAnn fabrics.

Marshmallow Treats

E my baker wanted to make a small treat that could be given out on Valentine's, similarly to petit fours (Wikipedia; a small cake generally eaten at the end of a meal. The name is French, meaning "small oven")

The solution, a large marshmallow dipped in chocolate and Valentine's sprinkles. The idea came from The American Girls, Coconut's cookbook.

http://www.amazon.com/Coconuts-Cookbook-Fun-Fluffy-Treats/dp/1584858923/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265165461&sr=8-1

The treats are easy to make, but we did it without following the recipe, hence why I am not a baker. We used one cup of Nestle chocolate chips, melted them in the microwave, at 20 sec intervals. When the chocolate is completely melted, we dipped the marshmallow tops (use skewers to hold the marshmallow)and lastly sprinkled the Valentine's sprinkles.
I recommend sprinkling rather than dipping the sprinkles because as the left over chocolate hardens in the sprinkle mix you can end up with clumps of sprinkles.

Well there you are a simple recipe for a yummy treat. Bon apetit!

Valentine Bath Fizz

We are already gearing up for Valentine's Day at Casa Osweiler. Valentine's is a great and girly holiday that makes us happy. We here love to give out Valentine's Day cards and gifts, there is so many choices both homemade and store bought. This year the girls will give out home made bath fizzies to friends. Bath fizzies are tablets made with natural ingredients that fizz in the tub similarly to an Alka-Seltzer.
Fizzies are easy to make and make bath time fun.
The recipe we use is Martha Stewart's and is provided in the link below.
We picked up the great silicone heart molds last year at Target in the dollar section and they have them again this year but they go fast so if you want some check soon.



http://www.marthastewart.com/article/natural-beauties-bath-fizzies?backto=true

Wax Hearts

This month I'd really like to focus on "Green Crafts" as they are now called. When I was little they were just crafts a typical mom with a low income did. She had to find a secondary purpose to many of our everyday household items. Who knew my mom was being hip and Green back then I just thought how embarrassing and cheap is this.So in honor of my mother I will be posting crafts that use mostly or all materials that had another purpose around our house.

This week we started with a WAX RELIEF. We rarely use wax paper in our house but I had baked and the dough required to be rolled up in wax paper to be chilled.So after using the huge sheet I thought what I can do to reuse this perfectly good piece of wax paper? The only thing I could come up with was a craft from my childhood were you melt crayon shavings between two pieces of wax paper.This craft was also a good way to use broken crayons or those excess restaurant crayons.

The materials that were used are simple.

1.A piece of wax paper in about 11x14 size

2.old crayons (red and pink)

3.an iron

4.craft paper to protect ironing board and iron

5.crayon sharpener or a grater with small grates

Grate or sharpen crayons onto wax paper.

Spread sparingly all over so the wax covers the paper evenly when melted.

Fold the ends up about 1/2 inch on all four sides of the sheet. If you don't do this step the wax will leak out the sides.

Heat iron to medium setting.

Put a piece a large piece of craft paper on ironing surface to protect it and one over the wax paper to protect the iron.

Iron thoroughly until wax has melted .

Let cool.

Since Valentines is around the corner we traced hearts onto the sheet and then cut them out.

E chose to tape hers up in the window as she thought they looked similar to the holiday window gel decals.M wants to use hers for handing them out as cards.

Whatever option it was a fun craft with little time and little spent but considered largely "Green".