Four Years of Cruz Valentine's

Four years of Valentine's from Cruz Man...

Year One // "Crush On This, Valentine."  We gave these to Cruz's 'teachers' at daycare.  He had only been at daycare for a month or so and those sweet girls became pretty important to us.   

Year Two // "You Make Valentine's Day S'more Fun."  Because who can resist those pink heart marshmallows on the shelves every year.  

Year Three // "You Color My World, Valentine."  Probably one of my favorite DIYs ever.  They're like snowflakes - every single one looks a little bit different.     

And this year...

Cruz's has obtained quite the collection of Hot Wheels as of late and with a small class at daycare this year, I thought this was a perfect way for Cruz to 'share' one of his favorite things with his friends.  He had fun filling the cellophane bags with a few candy hearts and picking out the perfect race car for each of his friends.  I love how they turned out and just know he's going to have so much fun giving them to his classmates tomorrow. 

eggs and such

Is Easter sneaking up on anyone else this week?  I think with a mixture of it still being March, a late spring break week, and the snow that's still lingering on the ground, my seasonal clock is off due to a lack of fresh air and fifty degree weather.  We're forcing bits of spring into this house in any way we can, though, and I think mother nature is responding appropriately.  The warm temps. out there today?  You can thank my red spring coat, summer shandy for dinner, and the three dozen pastel eggs sitting in my fridge.

This weekend, we baked.  We filled plastic eggs with chocolate whoppers, jelly beans, and reese's bunnies.  We dyed Easter eggs.  We congregated around a table of sweets, laughed at babies, ordered pizza and watched the NCAA tournament.  I pretended I was Martha Stewart and arranged speckled eggs in my new basket just so and snapped pictures that show off the colors of spring.  Pink doesn't make its way into my house very often and when it does, I make sure it's captured.
 

  

This year, I had some fun experimenting with naturally dyed Easter eggs.  For the past couple of years, I've had fun seeing the brightly colored eggs from my boxed dye kits; however, this year, I was going for a new look.  After reading this article from Better Homes and Gardens, I tried a few colors using simple kitchen ingredients and was impressed with the results.
 

  

I used a cup of really strong coffee for the brown, tumeric for the bright yellow, paprika for a faint burnt orange, a hunk of red cabbage for the robin's egg blue, and beets for the pink.  I let most of them sit overnight, but grew impatient with a few.  I love the organic look of the colors and the muted shades of spring.  Very Martha!

To do this, I lined up several plastic cups on the counter top.  I started with the coffee, pouring a cup of strong, hot coffee into the cup and adding a tbsp. or so of white, distilled vinegar.  I plopped a couple of eggs into the cup and let them sit for a couple of hours, turning them every so often for an even coat (or because I couldn't resist a peek).  

Next, I boiled one cup of water at a time to mix with my other ingredients.  For the bright yellow eggs, I added 2 tbsp. of tumeric and 1 tbsp. of vinegar to a cup of boiling water and stirred to dissolve the spice.  I added a couple of eggs and saw color almost immediately.  I got the best color from the tumeric and removed the eggs after only a half hour or so.

The robin's egg blue ended up being my favorite shade of egg.  These were a little more time consuming.  I added a third of a chunk of red cabbage (cut up into pieces) to three cups of boiling water.  I turned the heat off and let the cabbage water cool to room temperature before adding three tbsp. vinegar (1 tbsp. for every cup was go-to).  Then, with a slotted spoon, I removed the cabbage and added my eggs.  I let these babies sit overnight and couldn't believe the results when I woke up!

I did the pink eggs similarly, adding a couple of chopped beets to three cups boiling water, and three tbsp. of vinegar after cooling it to room temperature.  

The finished product...
 

Sunday, we had the family over to play with more egg creations.  We used food coloring to get some of the deep shades of blue and green, used yellow and orange acrylic paint and sharpie markers for the baby chick eggs, and speckled a few of my natural dyed eggs with a toothbrush in paint.  Just dip your toothbrush in the paint, hold it about four inches from the egg, and run your finger over the bristles to 'spray' the egg.  The speckled eggs are my absolute favorite - they look like little robin's eggs in my basket.  
 

For sweets, I baked up these carrot cake cupcake nests from Pinterest, this absolutely addicting bunny bait sweet popcorn mix, and Kelli made these peanut butter cookies that I think Cruz would have liked to eat the entire batch.  We topped our spread with my mom's fresh strawberry pie.  It sure made for a pretty table.
 

I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend.  I'm looking forward to visiting the baby chicks in Hampton, getting Cruz dressed up for church on Sunday, and seeing how his egg hunt strategies have changed from last year.  Spring is here and we have so much to be thankful for.               

14 Days of DIY Love: Handmade Hearts

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!  I’ve sure had fun sharing my 14 Days of DIY Love with you and want to thank all of you who shared your own ideas with me this month.  February can get so long sometimes, and it's fun to create something fun to look forward to.  And just like that, we're halfway through the month!

I had a little fun with this last project of mine before I left to catch my plane to New Orleans this morning.  Yes, I'm leaving my boys on Valentine's Day, and wanted to make sure they were well aware that my heart is with them even if I won't be for a few days!  After Beau left for work this morning, I snuck around the house and distributed 20 handmade hearts with messages of 20 reasons I love my boys.  10 for Cruz and 10 for Beau, all dispersed around the house for them to discover throughout the time I'm gone.  They'll find hearts taped to the bathroom mirror, hid under Beau's guitar case, or stuck ever so casually in Cruz's Cars DVD.  Tiny little reminders of why I love them so much, as well as a fun little scavenger hunt for Beau to play with Cruz when the nights may get a little longer without Mom around.  Either way, I can't wait to hear their reaction as they discover all of the pieces of my heart I left at home.

  

Happy Valentine's Day, sweeties, and stay tuned for a piece later today just for you.

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14 Days of DIY LOVE: Rice Krispie Hearts

It's a good day when you have all the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies or Rice Krispie treats in your pantry.  This is a goal I would like to shoot for at all times.  Both sweet treats are easy to whip up, and do wonders when it comes to curing that sweet tooth that always seems to pop up when all I can scrounge up are a few forgotten chocolate kisses in the bottom of the pantry, or a spoonful of nutella on a soda cracker. 

I had a about a half hour to kill in between church and house hunting on Sunday, and decided to brighten up our kitchen (where are you, sun?) with some baking with Cruz.  We've never made Rice Krispie treats together, and as much as he likes to help in the kitchen these days, this was the perfect snack for him to get his hands in.  He helped pour the six cups of krispies into my bowl, my 5 1/2 cups of marshmallows into my other bowl, and pushed start on the microwave for me while we watched our marshmallows melt.  He got a little carried away with his stirring, but the krispies were easy to sweep up, and proved to be a valuable distraction while I mixed my gooey goodness.

In honor of love day, I put a couple drops of red food coloring into my melted marshmallows before mixing in the krispies.  Then, instead of pressing them into a pan, I covered one of my heart cookie cutters with cooking spray and filled the mold with rice krispies.  This worked surprisingly well as long as I kept the cooking spray handy, and got about 10 hearts out of one batch.  
 

 

I have a feeling I may have gotten more had my little helper not been so hungry.

Don't worry, the krispie treats stayed at home with us and were gone in about five hours.

Just a couple more days of my Valentine's Day link-up!  Have a fun Valentine card, sweet, or craft idea?  I would love for you to link it up here!

Happy Fat Tuesday!  Save me some gumbo, New Orleans!
 

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14 Days of DIY Hearts - Newspaper & Pizza

This weekend, the three of us celebrated Valentine's Day.  I've never had to be away from my boys on this holiday, let alone any holiday before, so I was adamant that we spent the weekend acting as though February 14th had arrived a little early.  And just like any holiday, especially one whose objective revolves around the very act of love, how and when you choose to celebrate has little to do with the calendar day.  

Our morning started with snuggles in our bed before finding our way to the kitchen to finish off the last of our box of Trader Joe's Berry-Os.  Simple, quiet mornings on the weekends is reason enough for a celebration.  We gave Cruz a bath and jammed in the hallway to Beau's guitar before making our way back to the kitchen table to do some painting.  With my roll of trusty kraft paper, we made our canvas and tried our hand at watercolors for the first time.  And these pretty paints, let me tell you, are a masterpiece in themselves.  There are few things my camera loves more than a palette of messy paints.

I saw the cutest idea on Pinterest last week involving watercolors and newspaper, and decided to give it a whirl.  I started with the newspaper and cut out a bunch of different shaped hearts.  Then, with a variety of brushes, a jar or two of water, and Crayola's washable watercolor paints, I let Cruz go to town.  This was fun, effortless, and so easy to make look great, that I soon joined in on the fun and found I could have sat there for hours.
 

Cruz struggled a little with the process of watercolors ("No, honey, dip the brush in water first, then in your paint"), but he got the hang of it after awhile.  And when he managed to knock an entire jar of water on the table, it was easy to clean up and only added to the beautiful mess of it all.  
 

We were too full to eat our Scratch cupcakes after dinner Friday night, and they proved to be a perfect treat mid-painting.

I haven't done anything with our hearts yet, but think they would be adorable glued on a simple white or kraft paper card.  I'm all about the homemade Valentine's cards this year, and have had fun with a few other super simple cards using buttons, paper hearts, and googly eyes.
 

After some painting, some lunch, and a long afternoon nap for Cruz, we greeted our sleepy-eyed boy with his Valentine gift --- a Melissa and Doug re-stickable animal and habitat sticker pad, The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel game to add to his collection of games, and his very favorite, Cars 2, the sequel to his obsessively loved Cars movie.  He was stoked, and of course, did a little dance and pleaded with us to watch it immediately.  We worked hard to hold him off, as we needed his assistance with our main event of the night. 
 

For dinner, we did heart-shaped pizzas, a Valentine's tradition around our house.  I found a heart-shaped pizza pan at Target for $5 last week, and it worked surprisingly well with our homemade crust.  We went all out with toppings --- caramelized onions, prosciutto, pepperoni, and sauteed mushrooms, and let Cruz make his very own, very cheesy pizza, all by himself.  It had been awhile since we did homemade pizzas, and had fun making masterpieces to eat while the Lumineers serenaded our efforts.  
 

We ended the night with Cars 2, the three of us curled up on the couch, piled under blankets, with the volume turned all the way up to simulate our own movie theater in the comfort of our home.  Cruz was mesmerized at first, and looked similar to our Wreck-It Ralph real theater experience; however, about halfway through, he climbed off the couch and independently made his way upstairs, only to retrieve his trusted Cars 1 and kindly asking to watch, "Race Cars."  Apparently there is only one Cars in Cruz's book!

That's it!  A Saturday of heart-shaped newspapers, heart-shaped pizzas, and heart-shaped love to celebrate this little family I adore with all the pieces of mine.