More Valentine Loveliness

My awesome DH helped make Valentine's Day special this year. For breakfast, he had these sweet treats prepared:

This photo looks cluttered, but it gives you a glimpse of our table setting. Do you like the Valentine tree? I love the idea of it, but this particular one is a bit big and lopsided. 

DH and DD14 made Valentine garlands:

We forgot to buy Valentine's napkins, so we used Christmas ones instead. They still worked for the occasion ;) 

For dinner, we had our traditional heart-shaped pizzas -- but this year we all topped our own.

DH and DD9 created this awesome marble cake for dessert . . .

. . . along with these jam-filled heart cookies.

It was a lovely day of fellowship with family and friends celebrating this:

Subway art courtesy of The Girl Creative.

Do you have any Valentine traditions? Whether you do or not, how do you celebrate love?

Valentine's Art Gifts 2012

Valentine's Day has traditionally become a time for our family to get creative and celebrate love with pretty decorations and heart-shaped personal pizzas (more about that in another post, most likely ;) This year, it was DD9 and I who went to town making Valentine art. Inspired by one viewing of these Crazy Hearts Club collages, DD9 made these for some of the people at our table (and then some). (She had an extra, so though she wanted me to have a surprise, she decided to make one for me, too.) 

She likes her paint muddy -- and I have to get over that. It's all about the process for her -- and I love that she just delights in painting. I bit my tongue after suggesting once that she try to keep her colours bright. Who am I to tell her what her colours should look like?! 


We added the thready texture to the hearts by gluing on some remnants from the wool that I used for my project below (the litter of which was still sitting on the art table!). It's glittery litter -- so we were both happy to find a use for it :) 


Here is the special card she made for Daddy, inspired by this one I pinned to my pinterest board because I liked the idea:

We recycled some of her old art for the heart (she traced around a cookie cutter in the spot that appealed to her most) -- and I love how it goes with the background paper she chose. 

The inside has one of those fanned paper hearts that I helped her make with an assortment of papers, including recycled art, waxed paper, vellum, and scrapbook paper.

She used an old dyno tape label maker to create the words inside the card, which she had painted silver. 

I used the same label maker for my card, which was inspired by this Love Map. I didn't have a bunch of old maps to cut up, nor did I have a suitable picture frame, so I modified the idea to make a simple Valentine's card for my husband. I mapquested the places we met, married and live, then simply printed them on photo paper before cutting them out in heart shapes. 

 Not quite as eye-catching as the original, but it works for the occasion :) I can't bring myself to pay the outlandish prices for a store-bought card!

For several years running now, I have made a Valentine's gift for my husband. Inspired by this Valentine's Day Love Album, I made good use of my time during my last chemotherapy treatment. After pumping myself with some caffeine to counteract the effects of the Benedryl, I spent the morning creating this alphabet book to commemorate significant aspects of our love relationship. I had a nosey nurse -- she kept asking what I was writing for each letter and trying to read what I'd written! LOL I didn't mind, especially since I knew I'd be posting about it here, but I thought she was rather brazen in her nosiness ;) Of course, I'm not sharing the whole alphabet (that would be boring!) -- but I will point out that I took the idea a step farther and added a scripture verse for each word I'd used to correspond with the letters of the alphabet. That took forever! For the actual book, I kept things simple by using a pre-cut pad of colour-co-ordinated cardstock (with varied designs) and black letter stickers from our dollar store stash. I bound them with a Xerlox binder comb -- easy-peasy. 

Finally, my DH got creative a while back after I sent him a link to Skip to my Lou's Valentine's ideas. He picniked a photo and prepared a bunch of these for DS5 to give to his friends:

Pretty stinkin' cute, don't you think?


Have you enjoyed some seasonal creativity lately? This morning you might have seen me in our back yard sawing off the top of a dead tree (don't worry -- it was small!). Check in later this week to see how that tree top fit into our Valentine's decor! :)


I shared these creations at: Amongst Lovely Things' Pinterest Challenge:

Valentine's Blog Hop 2012

Welcome to the Word Art Wednesday / Stampin' Sisters in Christ Valentine's Blog Hop! (See the end of this post if you need more details.) The theme for this year's hop takes us far beyond the world's superficial concepts of love and romance -- it is a celebration of God's Love. All participating artists used word art of John 15:9 - "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love."


That verse is worth some reflection! How has the Father loved Jesus? He refers to Jesus as His "Beloved Son," in whom He is "well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). That, in turn, is how Jesus loves us. John 1:12 says that we become His children when we believe in His name. He loves us so much that He died on the cross so that we could spend eternity with Him (John 3:16). And it is our choice to follow His instruction to remain in that love and enjoy an abundant life in Christ while we live this life on earth (John 10:10). I, for one, wish to remain in His love! How about you?


I wrestled for a long time with how to represent this verse in my art. On the one hand, I was drawn to using typical Valentine's imagery and colours. However, when I began a collage along those lines, I just wasn't finding a way to depict the meaning in my images and design elements. So, I flipped through some Usborne art activity books for some inspiration, and this is what I came up with:

The person represents Jesus, with loving arms outstretched. Those arms are  suggestive of the cross on which He demonstrated the depth of His love for us -- and they are the arms of God inviting a warm embrace -- for eternity. What safer, more peaceful place could there be than the arms of our Saviour? That is truly the experience of real Love.


Personally, I am finding Rest and Security in those arms. I hope you are, too! 


Now, in regards to the official blog hop -- if you arrived at my blog from Miesje's Craft Room with a View (and via Word Art Wednesday), you're in the right place. But if you found me by chance, please go back and start at Word Art Wednesday to enjoy the whole hop.  As I mentioned, we are celebrating LOVE......God's love.  All you need to do is visit each stop on the blog hop and leave a comment on each blog to be eligible for the Grand Prize from Stampin' Up. The prize winner will be announced on February 14th.


After you've left your comment here, go to Roses By My Window,  the next stop on the hop, and I know Peggysue has something lovely for you to see.  We hope you enjoy the blog hop, and we'd love to have you visit us regularly at Word Art Wednesday.  


Thanks for stopping by, and have a blessed day!

Valentine's Day 2011

We're not the Hallmark variety of Valentine's Day celebrators -- but we do take every opportunity to make family memories and celebrate life and love and all that good stuff that makes the years slip by more sweetly. This year, I purchased a few "little somethings" for each child from the dollar store (no toys!) and wrapped them with brown paper and yarn. In our stamp stash we had a cute "I Love You" stamp, but I didn't have a heart stamp that I thought should accompany the words.

Soooo, I made one with a bit of cardboard and one of these foam shapes which have been kicking around for about a decade:

Now I want to make all kinds of them!!!! But that will have to wait.

For DH, I went a little cheesy and made a love message board . . .

As I've seen several places online, I painted a cookie sheet black, then distressed it a bit, added some ribbon, some scrapbook paper, a little decal -- and voila! The magnetic words were in the Valentine's section at the dollar store and inspired the little project:

The extra words are stored on the back:

There's one glaring one that will be discarded -- did you see it?????



Oh, and I also made him this little card -- cuz those card companies ain't gettin' my cash:

We have a tradition of celebrating Valentine's Day with home-made, heart-shaped pizzas. I have to say, this year they turned out beautifully!  ;-) Seriously -- the children especially loved them, and though they were the size of their heads, only the boys had a bit of a hard time finishing them!

Of course, part of the fun of preparing for the meal is setting the table. Because pizza is pretty casual, I didn't want to get too fancy -- but I did want it to be elegant. I decided I wanted white candlestick holders to match the dishes -- but I didn't have any and couldn't find any at Value Village. So -- I painted these:

DH thought it a little scandalous that I dared to paint glass Party Lite holders -- but come on -- they're probably 15 years old, and let's face it -- they're pretty ho-hum. Besides -- I'm sure the paint will scrape/wash off ;) The tall ones were wood and I did a lousy job of spray painting them -- but they served my purpose well enough. I was quite pleased with how they looked on the table, if not on close examination.

Now here was my stroke of genius . . . DH had picked up a white ceiling medalion from freecycle a few weeks ago, and it still sat in the living room where he'd put it upon his return home. Well, I glanced at it and decided it would make an awesome base for a centerpiece! Do you not agree????

AND, may I point out, DO notice how the beading around the medallion complements the beading around the painted glass candle holders!!!!

How serendipitous is that?????? (Remember -- don't look too closely at the paint job on the candle holder!)

And I added some red tassles to the vase -- just cuz I had them and wanted to use them and I didn't quite know how to do so ;)

Here are some other little details of the table setting . . . (I had to go with fake flowers because I couldn't bring myself to pay the jacked-up prices for fresh!):

So -- that's another memory made:) The surprise of the evening was that gameboy-DS12 gave his little brother FOUR of his Wii games as an expression of his love! Wow! We need to read 1 Corinthians 13 more often! (We read it this morning during devotions and were all convicted about the ways we fail to show love on a regular basis.) DS4 didn't clue in that they were DS12's actual games -- he kept saying, "Hey -- I have the same game as you!" 'Twas thrilling to see DS12 coaching him in the games after dinner . . .

Do you have any special Valentine's traditions? Even if you don't buy into the Hallmark money-grab, do you celebrate Love in any special way?

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