Valentine Mantel

I love decorating for Valentine's Day! It's the one time per year you can get away with decorating ultra-girly - pink, hearts, glitter, and frills! It's also Hannah's birthday, so it's extra special for us!

I made this Valentine bunting this year with extra fabric from a table runner I've been working on for TWO YEARS! Yeah, it's still not done. I intended to add letters to the bunting to make it say, "BE MINE" but I didn't get around to that either. Maybe next year when I finish the table runner. Uh-huh.

For my Valentine Mantel, I left the white dishes and silver accessories from my Winter mantel and added a bit of red.

Glittery red hearts on the tree branches (Michaels)...

a little heart pillow tucked in the pinecones...

and the red English transferware dishes that I have been collecting for a few year. The pattern is Woods Seaforth. (eBay!)

More pillow hearts I made from leftover fabric. When I was sewing them, Hannah sat next to me and exlaimed, "You're making pillow hearts for me?!" I said, "Well, for Valentine's Day." Hannah replied, "YES! For my birthday!"

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

New Beginnings

Tonight was New Beginnings for our ward Young Women. New Beginnings is a program held at the beginning of each year to welcome the incoming young ladies, introduce the Personal Progress program, and get everyone pumped about Personal Progress. With it being close to Valentine's Day, we decided to use the theme, "Fall in LOVE with Personal Progress".

For the refreshments, I made a 3-tiered cake decorated with little hearts in all the YW value colors. The girls introduced the YW values with giant conversation hearts.

Each table was decorated with paper hearts and heart-shaped bowls filled with conversation hearts. We had a great turnout!One of the leaders, Andrea, hand-painted this gorgeous banner on linen (!) to introduce the YW Motto, Logo, and class symbols. It was absolutely stunning!Stephanie made a cute Power Point presentation to teach everyone how to do their Personal Progress online!Some of the girls wrote a hilarious skit about falling in love with "Percy Progress" (a cardboard cutout of Taylor Lautner). They each took turns flirting with/drooling all over him. I laughed my head off! They are just so cute and funny! I love these girls!Our girls are so smart and strong and talented. They make me want to be better in every way! They are also so lighthearted and fun. They do goofy thing that make me think, "hey that's something I would have done as a young woman!" I feel so blessed to get to know them and spend time with them.We ended the night with cake and yummy raspberry punch.

Valentine's Day Breakfast

For Valentine's Day breakfast, I made the kids heart-shaped berry pancakes (Bryan was on-call). The kids also got to open their Valentine's Day love package from Nana and Papa! Thank you, Mom and Dad!

Andrew turned up his nose: "I HATE all kinds of berries!" (Who doesn't like berries?!)

Logan loved it all! I can usually count on Logan to eat whatever I make.

I was so excited to give Hannah scrambled eggs for the first time, but she didn't want anything to do with them! She wouldn't even touch them! She did like the pancakes and berries though.

Valentine Baking

Well, the cupcakes turned out okay after all. After the train wreck, I was able to salvage some, and the rest I just scraped off the frosting and re-frosted them. I figured, since I couldn't even make it across the room with the cupcakes, how on earth was I going to make it across the street to Andrew's school?! So, it was back to the original idea of putting each one in a plastic cup with M&Ms in the bottom for stability. I wish I could take the credit for this ingenious idea, but like most great ideas, I found it on the Internet.

All 23 cupcakes (we did have one casualty) made it safely to Andrew's classroom yesterday. They were a big hit!

Earlier in the week, I made this chocolate bundt cake with chocolate ganache and raspberries for Bryan's Sunday School meeting.

(P.S. Take a look at the little beauties next to the cake - glass snack sets from the 1950's that I found at a thrift store this week for $0.50 a piece! They are so pretty! I only have three sets, but I am planning on stalking the thrift stores and Craigslist for more. I absolutely love them!)

On to Hannah's Birthday cake! I probably went a little overboard on this one, but I am just enjoying all the girliness so much; I wanted lots of pink, and hearts, and ribbons! Besides, a girl only turns ONE once! And NO, a powdered sugar tornado did NOT blow through my kitchen. Why do you ask? I don't think it is possible for me to bake anything without making a colossal mess!Here's the two chocolate cake tiers with their pretty pink fondant. (Don't look too closely! This was only my second fondant cake, so please ignore the boo-boos!) My Mom and Dad gave me cake and fondant tools for my birthday this year. Thanks so much!

Adding the fondant "ribbons."

Me, putting the fondant bow together! (Thanks for the way cute apron, Nancy! I love it!)

Ta-Dah! The finished cake! I hope the birthday girl likes it!

AAAAAAAAUGHHHHHH!

It's 2:00 AM, and I just ruined the 24 beautiful Valentine cupcakes I made for Andrew's class party tomorrow...I mean, today. I just finished putting the last candy heart on the top and was carefully carrying the pan to the dining table, when one tipped over. It was like a horrifying slow-motion domino effect and they all came crashing down.

I'm going to go cry now.