Three on Thursday: Valentine’s Edition

Since it’s Thursday, and Valentine’s Day, here are three things I plan to do today to celebrate (even though Valentine’s Day is not my favorite):

One
I went downstairs after everyone was in bed last night, and decorated the kitchen table. My daughter has a little Valentine’s mailbox she made last year, and I put her card, some heart cookies (from IKEA that she asked for), and a couple of pieces of chocolate in the mailbox. I left my husband’s card out with a Hershey’s Kiss. It’s a nice start to Valentine’s morning when they come downstairs! My daughter will also have the last piece of candy out of her Valentine’s Countdown (pictured above), which I made last year.

Two
We will eat pizza for dinner. My husband and I have had pizza at home for Valentine’s Day every year that we have been married. Tonight, I am going to make a honey whole wheat pizza dough and basil pesto from Love Real Food. We had it a couple of weeks ago and it was DELICIOUS.

Three
A couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I made some hearts. We took some paper from a big roll, painted it randomly with a bunch of different colors (including a little glow-in-the-dark paint), and then cut out hearts. We’ve taped them to our kitchen windows to make it a little festive in there.

Head over to Carole’s blog to see who else is participating this week!

FO: Valentine’s Countdown

Yesterday, I promised a full post on the Valentine’s Countdown, and thanks to some lovely comments on it, I decided to do the full post today!

The Sugar House Shop, where I purchased the pattern for BK’s advent calendar, posted some new countdowns earlier this month, and I found I was helpless to resist. When I purchased materials for the Christmas calendar, I had also purchased the materials for the birthday countdown to get free shipping (I know I’m not the only one who commits to multiple projects just for free shipping, right?). And it just so happened that the ice cream colors I chose for the birthday countdown were almost an exact match for the Valentine’s Countdown.

I decided to see how much I could squeeze out of the 9×12″ felt sheets I had purchased for the birthday countdown, and it easily handled an ice cream scoop, two hearts and I still have half of it left over (yes, this means I will probably make even more of these projects :-)).

I swear, this project just flew by. I enjoyed it so much!

I only made one small change, which is that the pattern called for some printable Stick ‘N Stitch, which I could not find locally. I did some research, and found out that the new printer Mr Snips recently bought for us allowed you to print a mirror image of your file. So I did that, and used the iron-on transfer pen instead. It worked out great!

I only have one regret on this project, and it is that I only used the white floss on the dark pink hearts. I think I should have also used it on the purple. BUT – BK loves dark pink so much and she really likes the purple/pink combo, so I’m trying not to feel too bad about it. It’s difficult to read the purple ones from far away, but just fine if you’re near.

In fact, she loved the combo so much, she requested it for my one addition to this project. I recently found out that she can write her name backwards flawlessly, so I had her write her name backwards in iron-on transfer pen, and then I transferred it to a purple heart. I stitched over it with some pink, and now we will have a permanent memento of how sweetly her little 4-year-old hands write her name in 2018. It is, in fact, my favorite heart. And she will really like it because it means she will get a 15th chocolate out of it. I plan to fill the little hearts with a combination of Hershey’s Kisses and Andes Mints, both of which are the perfect size for these sweet little pockets. 

Here’s the big ta-da!

I’ll leave you with just one pro tip on this one. When threading the floss through the top to string them all together, using a safety pin was making me crazy. I pulled out a long plastic tapestry needle from my knitting bag, and it sailed through the tops like a breeze!

Now bring on January 31st, so we can fill this up! 🙂