Happy Valentines Day

7 years ago I had the worst Valentines Day EVER! My then boyfriend of about 5 years broke up with me. Lovely right? Luckily I met the true love of my life just about two weeks after. Just looking through our Valentines shared together over the last 7 years.

 

Picture taken on our first date sometime in February 2006

Valentine's Day 2007- Went to the Melting Pot for dinner

Valentine's Day 2009

Valentine's Day 2010

2011

2012

Happy Valentine's Day Everyone!

Treats for my Valentine's!

Happy Valentine's Day! I have been celebrating Valentine's Day for the last month. I LOVE love! Yep.  I love all the cheesy, sappiness of it all. But the best thing about my Valentine's Day?

1. I get to spend the day with this MOST special Valentines ever:

2. My Mr. has to leave for work super early but when I woke up and went into the bathroom he had left the sweetest note for me on the mirror. Can't wait until he gets home tonight!

3. Treats. I love me some V-Day treats. For our Girls night we made these delicious cake pops. Oh man were they yummy.

But something special for my Valentine? Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream. I know it is still cold outside but seriously me & my Mr. love ice cream. Definitely my most favorite treat. I tried to make it a little bit "lighter" but it is still just as delicious. It tastes fresh and creamy!

And a flashback of Valentine's past: We like to make each other special dinners for Valentine's day. We have made this dessert twice! Molten Lava Cakes- Thank you Paula Deen! Seriously, so easy and amazing. The recipe calls for a hint of orange......mmmmmmmmmmmm.

How are you celebrating Valentine's Day? I really feel that every day you should let those you love and care for know how special they are, not just once a year. But that is the fun thing about Valentine's day... you get to go a little over board. And who doesn't love celebrating?

Happy Valentine's Day,

Whitney

My favorite Love quote:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends

Recipes:

Fresh Strawberry Ice-Cream Recipe

3 cups fresh ripe strawberries, stemmed and sliced
2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 C sugar, divided
1 C whole milk
1 C lowfat milk
2 C heavy cream
3/4 C half & half
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

In a small bowl combine the strawberries with the lemon juice and 1/2 C of sugar. Stir gently. Place in the refrigerator for about 2 hours to allow the strawberries to make juices. Then, strain the berries reserving the juice. In a food processor, puree the strawberries and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, use a hand mixer on medium speed and combine milk with the remaining sugar. Mix until sugar is dissolved,  about 2 minutes.  Stir in the cream, half & half, vanilla, strawberries & strawberry juice. Pour mixture into your ice cream machine for the amount of time suggested per the manufacturer. (Mine takes about 25 minutes)

Place in a freezer safe bowl and freeze to harden just slightly... or eat right away if you like your ice cream really soft!

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Molten Lava Cakes
Recipe from Food Network - Paula Deen

Ingredients
6 (1-ounce) squares bittersweet chocolate
2 (1-ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 stick) butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
3 large eggs
3 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange liqueur - We used 1 teaspoon of orange extract instead and it was a perfect amount
Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Grease 6 (6-ounce) custard cups. Melt the chocolates and butter in the microwave, or in a double boiler. Add the flour and sugar to chocolate mixture. Stir in the eggs and yolks until smooth. Stir in the vanilla and orange liqueur. Divide the batter evenly among the custard cups. Place in the oven and bake for 14 minutes. The edges should be firm but the center will be runny. Run a knife around the edges to loosen and invert onto dessert plates.

Valentine's Day Girls Craft Night

Last night was our first Valentine's Day Girls Craft Night. The invitations were sent out last week and we have been making preparations all week long. Eight of us girls got together for a fun night of crafting and delicious dinner. We served Tomato Basil Parmesan Soup along with our homemade Fabulous French Bread. After we were done eating the crafting began! Everyone was in charge of bringing their own craft to work on. Thanks to Pinterest we all had some cute crafts! Here are some of our decorations:

Pom Poms made out of our Coffee Filter Flowers

Felt Flowers with Brown Paper Table Runner

Close up of our Coffee Filter Flower Pom Poms

Paint Swatch Heart Garland

Gift Bags- Inside our guests found: Valentine's Cake Pop, Paint Swatch Heart Garland, and Ombre Sugar Hearts

Our Valentine's Day Cake Pops that we made:

Table Centerpiece:

Whitney's Craft of the night:

XOXO,

Whitney & Nicole

Felt Flowers Galore!

The last few days I have been making felt flowers like its my job! I found this cute idea for different types of felt flowers on Pinterest (Oh how I love Pinterest!) Not sure if you remember from my last craft, but I bought a ridiculous amount of felt. Anyway, there is a great tutorial for all different types of felt flowers here. It is so helpful and they are so simple to make! I decided to go with gray, cream and red felt flowers. They are going to be a part of our table decorations for our upcoming Valentine's Day Party/Girls Craft Night. I love the different textures. Here are some of my flowers:

All you really need to make these flowers is felt, hot glue and scissors! So simple.

XOXO,
Whitney

Sugar for Love Day

Workin on some Ombre Sugar Hearts tonight. Found this cute idea here where you'll also find all the how to on them. I'm obviously not all the way finished yet but when I am I'm going to put them in one of our apothecary jars for some V-Day or what I like to call Love Day decoration that doubles as candy... love the sugar cube? You'll love these. Lots of love today.

Happy Love day,

nicole

Valentine's Day Ruffle Cake Attempt

I got a few new pastry tips last week and have been wanting to try them out. I watched a few Youtube videos on how to use them to make roses. I also found this ruffle cake and was dying to try and learn how to do a ruffle cake. So I pulled out my heart shaped cake pans. A tip for frosting cakes, let the cake cool completely. Then, let it cool in the freezer or in the fridge. Frost the cake entirely first then start your ruffles on the side. I used a Wilton #103 for my ruffles and rose. To make the ruffles hold bag vertically, slot of tip perpendicular to cake; use swift back-and-forth motion 1 inch wide to make ruffle, pulling tip up side.Not the best frosting job but it was my first time attempting ruffles and roses. My goal this summer: Take a cake decorating class.

 

Excited for V-Day!

XOXO,
Whitney

Valentines Invites

I'm so excited to share the project I've been working on the last few days with everyone! I made some Valentines Craft Night invitations that I think are adorable. For Christmas this year my mother got a Silhouette Cameo and it may be the coolest thing I've ever laid eyes on. This thing does everything! It really is such a great investment. Back to the invitations, I got the idea from here and then I went to work on the silhouette cameo trying to find something similar and I did! It was close but not quite the same but I was sold. They took some work to cut and past onto the invites but I am totally excited with how they turned out! Valentines worthy? I think so.

Keep checking back for more sneak peaks of our projects we are working on for our Valentines Craft Night.

Much Love,

nicole

stay tuned

This is the beginnings of a project I'm currently working on. Can't wait to show you the finished project! Pictures to follow this week, so stayed tuned!

White Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream

So I have been trying to make a new ice cream each week. So far I have made Dark Chocolate & Butterfinger which were both delicious. One day my Mr. ate the butterfinger ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Healthy, I know. This last week I was trying to come up with a new flavor that was decadent and different. I had in my refrigerator 1 lb of strawberries and somehow wanted to incorporate that into my next ice cream flavor, but I didn't want just regular old strawberry ice cream. Then I remembered that I had a bag of white chocolate chips in my pantry. I immediately though of how I loved White Chocolate dipped Strawberries and thought combining this idea with ice cream  would be stellar. So I googled it just to see if anyone else had done this and sure enough I found this recipe from Gimme Some Oven. I read it and knew that was my flavor of the week! I did change it up a little bit.

Here is the recipe that I used and I changed it up a little:
White Chocolate Strawberry Ice Cream Recipe(Adapted from Gimme Some Oven)
Ingredients:

• 8 oz white chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup low fat milk
• 2/3 cup sugar
• pinch of salt
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup half & half
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 cup strawberries, finely diced
• 3 oz white chocolate chips (add at the end)

Method:
Put the chocolate pieces in a large bowl and and set a mesh strainer over the top.
Warm the milk, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan. In a separate medium bowl whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.
Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer over the white chocolate. Stir until white chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth, then stir in the cream, half and half, and vanilla. Stir until cool over an ice bath.
Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Add the strawberries and remaining white choc chips about 5 minutes before the ice cream maker’s cycle is completed.

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The Ice cream turned out DELICIOUS. So decadent and reminded me of a white chocolate  dipped strawberry. And look how cute it is! I think it would make a perfect Valentine's Day Dessert:

XOXO,
Whitney

Valentine's Yarn Wreath

So... last week I finally caved in and joined Pinterest. I was holding out because I was worried I would spend too much time on it. Oh the things and ideas you can find on that website! So far I have loved it. It sparks a little creativity in me and makes me to want do more. (And I don't feel bad about myself if I don't, because let's be honest, I won't do everything I put on my pin boards) I found a few ideas for yarn wreaths and decided to make one. I knew for a while that I wanted to make one for Valentine's Day. I knew I wanted the color gray incorporated in it somehow because well, I'm a little obsessed with the color gray. If you remember, I started working on my wreath over the weekend and I didn't get very far. I finished it tonight and hung it up on my door. YAY!!

Here is what you will need:

 Felt (for rosettes)
Yarn
Straw Wreath
Lace
Beads
Fancy Ribbon
Hot Glue

First, make your rosettes. Then, put your yarn into yarn balls. Trust me,  if you do it is much easier to

wrap your wreath.

 

 Glue your starting end to the wreath and get wrapping!!

 This part takes the longest. It took me approximately 1 1/2 hrs or so just to wrap my wreath. Maybe I'm slow? But I thought I was going pretty fast. (I was also watching Ellen so I might have been a little distracted. Thank goodness my little one was napping)

 After you are done wrapping add your felt rosettes.

 Then the rest of your embellishments:

 Last of all, I used some left over lace and glued it on the back so that I would be able to hang my wreath on my door.

 And VOILA! Here is my wreath on my door and everything.

I am LOVING the gray, with the cream and pink. Well, I just love gray anything. And I love Valentine's Day. I don't know why but I always have. Must be the romantic in me?

On to my next V-Day craft!

XOXO,
Whitney

Rainy Day

Yesterday was such a rainy, snowy, blustery day and it turned out to be the perfect Craft Day. I got together with Kelli and made/started some super cute crafts. First we went to Hobby Lobby to get all of our supplies. I have about 4 Valentine's Day crafts that I have been wanting to make. First, we made a framed subway art that Kelli found on Pinterest:

Then we started working on making a Valentines Day Yarn Wreath. Well, I made all my felt rosettes for the wreath but wasn't able to finish the whole wreath. We ran out of time since we had to make it to the Jazz game last night.

Here is a preview of my soon to be Valentine's Day wreath:

Can't wait for it to be all finished. Let's just say I may or may not have bought enough felt for a lifetime of craft projects! Ha ha.

I have 2 other Valentines Day crafts I will be making as well. Can't wait to show you.

XOXO,
Whitney