Be my Valentine...

Valentine's Day is one of my favorite days to celebrate with the kids. There are so many cute things to do and I love seeing the surprise and excitement on my daughter's face. Plus, this year was extra special because of my newest Valentine and of course, it's an excuse for a date night with the hubby :) I hope everyone enjoyed their Valentine's as much as I did. Here's a run down of our special day.

We started the day off with heart shaped pancakes. Here you will find a recipe from  scratch {heart pancakes}. I'm not a morning person so at 6:30 am all I wanted to do was add water and shake.

They were just as delicious!

Next up, a lunch surprise for McKenzie. This required a little planning ahead but it turned out perfect! I bought a $3 box of chocolates at Wal-Mart and ate all the chocolates inside. Happy Valentine's Day to me :)

Then, I cut out the divider section of plastic by running an exacto knife around the edge.

My plan for this special lunch was to make everything heart shaped. McKenzie's latest lunch craze are pizza lunchables so I cutout the pizza bread and pepperonis with heart shaped cookie cutters. Then, I put each item in an individual ziplock baggy. I also packed a few heart shaped marshmallows, a heart shaped Little Debbie snack, and strawberries that I sliced and cut into hearts.

Everything fit great into the chocolate box and she loved it!

You can find another cute idea for lunch in a chocolate box at Katherine Marie.

Last but not least, a Valentine treat for the hubs.

Red Velvet Oreo Truffle Bars: one layer red velvet brownies, one layer oreo truffle, and one layer melted chocolate with mini chocolate chips. DELICIOUS!!

You can find the complete recipe at Pizzazzerie.

An inexpensive gift idea...

With a large family and a school aged daughter we get a lot of birthday invitations and lots of birthday parties mean a lot of birthday presents. As a one income family, I am always looking for ways to be more budget conscience and let's face it, things are expensive these days! Well, I am going to show you an awesome, inexpensive gift idea with limitless possibilities. My version was for my teenage cousin but, this could be done for any age range, girl or boy.

All you need is a vase {or any type of container that would go with your theme}, a piece of styrofoam, filler {can be anything that fills your container and covers the styrofoam}, and dowels. I bought the first 3 items at the Dollar Tree for $1 each and I found the dowels at Wal-Mart for .97 cents.

When you have all of your items and are ready to start putting them together, cut the styrofoam to fit in your vase and cover it up with your filler. I found it easier to attach my items to the dowels before inserting them into the styrofoam so that I could arrange the items according to size. I also adjusted the height by cutting the dowels at different lengths. Another tip is to put heavier items on shorter dowels, closer to the vase. For lighter objets, attaching them to the dowels with hot glue works great. The heavier items I had fell off the dowels when I used only hot glue so I wrapped clear packing tape around the item and the dowel. It held perfectly and you couldn't see the tape. Once you get all your items arranged the way you like them finish it off by tying some ribbon around the top of your vase.

This is my finished product. My cousin is a huge Florida Gator fan so I went with an orange and blue theme. Since she is also a teenage girl I went with a pampering theme as well. I used face masks, nail polish, polish remover, a foot soak, toe separators, a gator bath poof, lip gloss, foot lotion, eye shadow, and some candy. All items were puchased at the Dollar Tree or Walmart and all items were $1 or less. Total price for this fantastic gift: $15.00 and it was a total hit!

Now, as much as I would love to have come up with this all on my own, I didn't and it's only fair to give credit where it's due. Connoisseur of Creativity is where I found my inspiration for this gift.

Let me introduce myself...

Thanks for stopping by to read my blog. I hope you find the information posted here to be worth following. As an introductory post I decided to tell a little bit about myself and the kind of posts you will be seeing. I have been happily married for what will be 7 years in April. I am a stay at home mommy of 2 beautiful babies. McKenzie Grace, my 6 year old and Colton Timothy, who will be a year this July. My addiction of all things handmade and crafty led to my obsession of Pinterest which, in turn created my desire to start a blog. Here you will find stories about my children's quirks and tutorials for my weekly crafts, most of which were found on or inspired by Pinterest. I am a first time blogger so feel free to leave feedback on what you would like to see more or less of as well as suggestions for crafts you would like to see completed and explained. Enjoy!