Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I just love Valentine's Day...not because of the roses and chocolates and other commercialized aspects, but because it's a special day to express love to my loved ones. My parents always made a big deal of the holiday growing up and over the years its become my favorite holiday.

This year I decided to make some nifty little suckers I found in the back of the Family Fun magazine. As soon as I saw it I knew I need to make them for our 5 year old Sunday school class. Only problem is they need mini candy canes and I saw it several weeks after Christmas. BUT I found some for .37 on clearance! Perfect for frugal natured me!! I just love how they turned out.

I will say that the recipe said to form the candy canes into hearts and put in 235 degree oven on parchment for 10 minutes. Well, this is what happened when I did that.

Not exactly what I was looking for. Very, Very thin and brittle. I found that putting them in a 225 degree oven for 3-5 minutes gave me the results I was looking for. I also used dark chocolate candy melts instead of oil and chocolate chips, simply because I didn't have chocolate chips and I was in a store where I could get the candy melts with a coupon really inexpensively!

This year as we were discussing what to do on Valentine's Day Roderick said he wanted to have a slumber party under the stars.  So that's just what we did.  I'm sure you are thinking HUH?? It's February, wasn't that a little cold?? Well no because we put a few glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling, blew up our queen size mattress and watched movies together in our living room. Oh, and ate popcorn made on the stove with a whirley-pop. (My Valentine's day gift to my love. He had popcorn made with one at a friends house and couldn't get over how great the popcorn was.) Now we are spending some time at the library with my husband studying and me on the computer. Hey, at least we are together!

  

I also had to share these adorable slippers my friend gave me for Valentine's Day! They are beyond soft and so comfy! 

 I'm linking up to

 

 Today's color was red!

2010 Christmas Tour

I love joining Nester's annual Christmas Tour every year. This year I don't have as much  decor done as I usually do. Here's my previous year's post 2008 & 2009 if you want to see decor in every room.

Well, without further ado here's our Christmas decor so far... I may do more, but I may not. Simplicity is nice sometimes!

 

I love the polka dots, red, and lime. It makes me happy and I often find myself staring at it! I also find I have loads of pictures of it!!

 

 

 

 

 

The reason for the season! What a wonderful gift God gave us... His perfect Son who came to pay our great debt and give us Salvation! 

The stocking are hung on the bookshelf with care....

Made this wreath with supplies from the dollar store, ribbon that was on my present from my mother-in-law last year and a lovely ornament from my mom! (cost all of $2 to make!) Here's where I got the idea from Nester.  Looks much better in person, I promise!

 

Another wreath from the dollar store. This one cost a little more as it took about 4 bags of peppermints. I loved this one much better...not sure I like the shape or the green showing through, but it will stick around at least for this year.   

 

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our home at Christmas time. If you are not coming from there go check out Nester's links...there's a lot of beautiful homes this year!

A Colonial Christmas

The church gym was transformed last weekend into a Colonial wonderland. We have some really creative  and talented ladies! They even covered the poles in "brick."

26 different ladies decorated tables complete with china and favors. So many different idea. Here are a few of my favorites....although, it was really hard to only pick a few.

 



My project was getting all these wonderful cookies together with their recipes. Every lady now has a wonderful collection of 20 different Christmas cookie/treat recipes!

So many great giveaways. Lots of great gifts were handed out, but the best was the "giveaway table." Yep...the whole table went to one lucky lady.

The focus was on fostering gospel relationships among our ladies. Each lady was encouraged to invite their friends and family. We had over 50 guests! Our pastor's wife gave a wonderful gospel centered challenge. I know of a couple of ladies that accepted the Lord as their Savior as a result of the event! Certainly made all the work totally worth it!

May your focus be on Christ and the gospel message this season!