Valentine's Day 2018

Over the past several years I've had fun making valentines for my older daughter's daycare classmates. 

All of the ideas that I have used have been non-candy ideas because between Halloween and Christmas I feel like kids are just saturated with candy.  You can read about the sock valentines here and the gold fish valentines here.

This year I had two set of valentines to make with two kids in daycare.  I also decided to make a little something for the teachers too. 

I made these cute teether valentines for the baby room at daycare.  I love a good pun when it comes to Valentine's Day if you haven't noticed.  I found these adorable silicone teethers on Amazon.  They come in packs of 5 so I needed two for the 9 babies in Ana's room.  That means that Ana got one too and she loves it.  It is so easy for her to hold and she loves chewing on it. 

They are food grade silicone and can be put in the refrigerator to get them chilled to help with sore gums.  I used my Silhouette Portrait to make, print, and cut the tags that I tied to the teethers. 

The teethers are supposed to be fruit shaped and it says on the package that this one is supposed to be a pineapple.  I don't know about you but to me this looks like an ear of corn ha ha!

For my two year old's classmates I made these play-doh valentines.  I just bought the party pack of play-doh (found in the party aisle at Target).  I made the cards on my Silhouette of course.  The holes ended up being a little small for the play-doh containers so I just snipped around the circle to make the opening a little bigger. 

Finally I made some heart cookies for the teachers and attached this cute card to each box.  I got the boxes from work.  Someone had brought the teachers at my school chocolate covered strawberries from Edible Arrangements and they came in these boxes.  I covered up the Edible Arrangement logo on the front of the box but didn't realize there was one on the inside lid too.  One of Ana's teachers said "I didn't know Edible Arrangements made cookies."  So funny. 

The cookies are chocolate sugar cookies that I made using this recipe from the blog Baking a Moment.  These cookies are fantastic.  They don't spread and you don't have to chill the dough because the recipe calls for chilled butter. I used a scalloped heart cookie cutter to cut them out.  For the frosting I used this recipe from the blog In Katrina's Kitchen.  This was my first time using the recipe and I really like it.  The flavor was good and it was easy to pipe.  I added a couple of drops of red food coloring to get this nice pale pink color which ended up matching my little pink pearl sprinkles perfectly.  I love to bake but I am not the best decorator in the world but this frosting made it easy to make a pretty finished product.

That's all for now.  I've got to get back to sewing now.  I think my next post will be another installment of my Sewing for Baby series as I have been working on a ton of baby related sewing projects lately!

Lip Balm Christmas Cards

 I can't believe that I am writing my last post of 2016!  This year has just flown by.  Today I am writing a short post on these cute Christmas cards that I included in the gifts to the teachers at my daughter's daycare.  This was a quick and easy project using my Silhouette Portrait.  This would also be an easy project to complete with photo editing software and a large hole punch if you don't have a
Silhouette machine. These cards are fun because they include a little gift presented in a fun way.  You can use the EOS brand lip balm for these cards but I have also seen other lip balm brands packaged like the EOS brand recently.

 I opened up Silhouette Studio and started by drawing a rectangle in the size that I wanted my cards. I made mine roughly 4" by 6".  Then I chose my designs and message using fonts that I had downloaded on my computer.  Some of the designs I used were print and cut designs so they were already colored in but you can check out this post on custom wine labels to see how to fill in the font and designs that aren't print and cut.

Next I drew a circle which was just a little under 1.5" in diameter and placed it where I wanted it as part of my design. 

I made sure to add registration marks in the registration marks window and then I printed my cards on white card stock.  Finally I cut the cards and circles out with my Silhouette Portrait.  I made sure that I had only the circles and rectangles selected for the machine to cut.  

 Finally I unscrewed the lip balms and carefully placed the side with the lip balm through the hole and then screwed on the cover.

This card was my favorite of the bunch!

No wait maybe the holly one was my favorite...or the wreath one!  Okay I really love them all so much that I can't even pick a favorite.

The rest of the gift included a chocolate bar and a Starbucks gift card.  You can think of it as kind of a winter survival kit.  Lip balm for those chapped winter lips, a warm drink to warm you up, and chocolate-because well, it's chocolate.  I hope you enjoyed this little Christmas card idea.  This idea would work great for any occasion.  This idea would be great for Valentine's Day too especially if you are trying to find a non-candy Valentine idea like my sock Valentine's from last February.

So I have been busy with many other projects which I hope to blog about eventually but here is one that I won't be writing a separate post on.

Isn't this little baby gown adorable?  This cute Mermaid Baby Gown is by Kate of See Kate Sew. The 0-3 month pattern is a free download if you sign up to receive her newsletter.  You can also buy the full pattern here and it includes 3-6 month, 6-12 month, and 12-18 month sizes as well.  I made it for a friend's new little girl.  

Well I hope you enjoyed all my posts in 2016.  I look forward to all the new ideas that I can share with you in 2017.  I have one big announcement coming early in 2017 that I can't wait to share with you guys but it isn't quite ready yet (and no I'm not pregnant ha ha!).