Valentine's Day H54F

Hooray it's Friday!  I can't tell you how happy I am to see the end of this week.  Five straight weeks of Craig on the road has definitely taken it's toll.  I'm much more balanced and happy when he's home.  And Valentine's Day is an even better way to end a week like this. 

1.  Candy with Scriptures

Each of the kids got a tiny little box of chocolates this morning before we read scriptures.  It's nice to start the day with a treat, don't you think?

2.  Lunch Surprises
I found these adorable little chocolate lollipops and snuck them into the kids' lunches today with a little love note.  I'm hoping someone will text me today when they find their surprise.  

3.  Love Notes
I think this is the second or third year that we've done this.  I cut out a million little hearts out of construction paper and we write little love notes to each other and stick them up on the kitchen cabinets.  It's so fun to see what the kids write to each other during the month.  

4.  Decorations Around the House
It's so nice to finally put a little color back up on the walls.  January seems so bleak after the house has been filled with Christmas.  I love that February comes just in time to revive me again.  

5.  Valentines
Last year we made homemade Valentines.  Every year we've made homemade Valentines.  But this year, McKay is in 5th grade and he's more of a minimalist Valentine giver these days.  He just wanted plain old store Valentines for his class this year.  I think my years of coming up with cute Valentine ideas and doing little Valentine crafts are coming to an end.  :(

Happy Valentine's Day.  I hope it's a wonderful day where you are and that the people who surround you have told you how much they love you today.  

Valentine's Day 2013

Last night I started baking cookies for Mack's class party at school.  And since I was already baking, I thought I'd try those cute fortune cookies again.

Here's the break down on those.  They're SO easy...really.  

Recipe:
1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
2 large egg whites
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp of cornstarch
1/4 tsp of salt
3 tsp of water

1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2) Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.
3) Spoon a tablespoon of batter onto a cookie sheet and spread it out in a 4" circle.
4) Bake 5 minutes or until edges are golden brown around the edges.
5) Quickly remove from cookie sheet, place fortune inside and fold in half and then bend cookie over the edge of a cup or a mug to get it curvy.  Place in a muffin tin until cooled so that it retains its shape.

I dipped these in pink candy melt and added some little chocolate sprinkles just to make them festive, but they're pretty cute just plain, too.

 And then I put one in each of the kids lunches.  Cute, huh?

I made enough to spread some fortune cookie love around the neighborhood, and put them into cute little Chinese take out boxes.

I would totally make these again.  It took me an hour to make 17, and except for the part where I burned my fingers every time I tried to fold one, it was really easy.

Then Mack and I made heart shaped sugar cookies for his class and he finished up his Valentines.  We found these cute fishbowl printables on Etsy and just added a few Swedish fish.  

4th graders are so easy to please.  Mack's teacher and I decided a few weeks ago that simple would be the best plan for this party.  

So, I bought white bags for them to decorate...

 ...then they passed out all their Valentines...

and we played a few games...like stacking conversation hearts.  Pretty fun!  

I love Valentine's Day.  I love any excuse to pop in and deliver little gifts to my friends and neighbors.  And I love any excuse to make sugar cookies.  I think Mack had a great time at his class party and even though it wasn't huge and elaborate, I don't think one person noticed.  I'm so glad that this party came together so well, and that all those 4th graders are so wonderful and polite.  There won't be very many years to be the Class Party Mom, so I'm soaking in every minute of this experience while I can.  

Oh, and here's the best part...when I got home there were steaks marinating and THESE on my counter...

Hope your Valentine's Day has been great and that lots of love has been floating around your space!  <3

Love at Home

I wasn't feeling a lot of Love at Home today as my children all returned from long days at school.  Some of them were grumpy.  Some were impatient with me and with each other.  Some of them were not very anxious to clean up messes they had made.   The Scout Master is out of town this week, so I didn't have him to "bounce" my irritation off of.  Instead I decided to remove myself from them for a little while and regroup.  I constantly feel the weight of my responsibility to set the tone in my home, and if left to my own devices today, I would not have set a very good one.  

Last week I had asked one of the girls to prepare a Family Home Evening lesson on "having a house of order," but after the events of the day, I made an executive decision to change our schedule.  It's February, which is LOVE MONTH, so I thought tonight would be appropriate to talk about LOVE at HOME.   It was a short lesson.  Spell Girl read a scripture about "loving one another" and we all marveled at how many love references there are in the scriptures.  I talked for a little while about how our house should be a LOVE ONLY zone.  We should be able to come home from long days, challenging classes, and not so great school environments, and feel safe and loved and uplifted.  We should have a family filled with people rooting for each other.  

"None of us need one more person bashing or pointing out where we have failed or fallen short. Most of us are already well aware of the areas in which we are weak. What each of us does need is family, friends, employers, and brothers and sisters who support us, who have the patience to teach us, who believe in us, and who believe we're trying to do the best we can, in spite of our weaknesses. What ever happened to giving each other the benefit of the doubt? What ever happened to hoping that another person would succeed or achieve? What ever happened to rooting for each other?” ― Marvin J. Ashton

After the lesson, I handed everyone 5 little paper hearts that I had cut out last week, and asked them all to write one thing they loved about each of the other 5 people in our family.  I encouraged them to put some thought into their love notes and not just write something funny or silly.  And then we taped all of our hearts to the kitchen cabinets.  (This is not an original idea, by the way.  We did this last year after I read about it on another blog. The kids loved it and we decided to make it an annual tradition.)

In 20 minutes, we changed the tone of our home from annoyed and impatient, to kind and happy.   

It's so nice to dig around in our heads for the lovey dovey things that are in there...sometimes buried under a lot of other stuff.  I love to read what the kids write about each other...and about us.  It's always such a happy surprise.

It will be so nice to wake up to those happy notes every morning as we walk into the kitchen. There are a few extra hearts leftover in case any of us feel a little inspired to add some more love to the kitchen.  We're officially dedicating February as LOVE MONTH in our house, and we're designating our home a LOVE ONLY ZONE.  Maybe if we do it for a whole month, it will stick for the rest of the year!  <3