Valentine's Day Crafts!

 So Monday is yet another halmark created holiday aimed at making men spend oddles on pointless gifts or face the wrath of an angry girlfriend/fiancee/wife. We women get it pretty easy, I mean really what woman goes all out of this holiday for their man? I got The Marine a card, that is all he needs really. He doesn't ever ask for anything and if you try and ask him what he wants he says nothing....then if I do have some stroke of genius he figures it out like in a nano-second....soooooo.... yep I got him a card! I also do not want, nor need anything and I hope he doesn't think to buy me anything cause I just bought myself a new camera lens and the amount I spent on it equals Christmas+Birthday gift money...soooo yep Marine don't get me anything! I never really bought into this whole holiday anyway! BUT it is a great fun excuse to make cookies and other themed things with the children!!
 First thing we did was make Nana and Papa some 'cards' since they will have the kids on Valentine's day I thought it would be nice for them to have home-made cards from the kids. I laid out our handy shower curtain on the living room floor, brought out the "washable" (I put that in quote cause crayola thinks washasble means mommy has to time to scrub each kid in the bathtub after use...not my idea of washable) paints, I cut out different sized hearts from construction paper to use with glue, I brought out their toddler sized paint brushes, and finally let them go to town on two large sized pieces of construction paper. I also had bought at target's cheap dollar bargin area some cute stickers with googly eyes!

                                            (yep took this blurry pic on purpose. As you know I am not much for posting my kids on the blog)

So they had a blast painting, glueing, sticking, and generally making the biggest mess possible. Thank you shower curtain!!! So we laid those out to dry and will present them to nana and papa later when we drive up there tonight.

 Next we made cute peanut butter and jelly cookies! I had gone to a wic appointment Wednesday and they gave us a fun kids cookbook and this was one of the treats in there, very simple to make and Ladybug really enjoyed helping mixing the dough and then spooning out onto the cookie sheet! I then flattened the mounds and made a heart shape in the middle with some pumpkin carving tools. I then used a simple pastery bag to pipe in the jelly into the heart shapes to make the middles. That part was a bit annoying but they turned out really cute!

(carving out the heart centers and then I just pressed down the middle to make an indent for the jelly)

(piping in the jelly hearts. Using the pastery bag was the easier way that I thought to do this only cause I had left overs)

(ready to go in the oven!! if you do make these use a good amount of jelly in the middle it just tastes better!!)

(after being baked!! ready to be eaten!!!)
 So the peanut butter and jelly heart cookies turned out very yummy, just like eating a sandwich really. They were cookie like but also the mixture of the two made me feel like having a peanut butter sandwich!! The kids enjoyed them alright and I made The Marine take the extras to work and he said they all enjoyed them there!!

 So then we had to made sugar cookies to frost and decorate. I had picked up cheap heart shaped cookie cutters and sprinkles at Target during our trip there one night and I was personally excited about making these cause I love frosted suagr cookies! I let Ladybug pick out the frosting and she picked the biggest tube of light pink frosting she could find in the store!! I mean if you're a kid why the heck not! Go big!! I made a simple cookie recipie that wasn't too sweet because the frosting was going to be plenty of sweet. Ladybug and Mister both helped cut out the shapes, more-so Ladybug cause Mister is still a little too young to fully help. I baked them and we frosted them the next day....that was a huge mess to say the least!!! I had accidently left the flour jar out on the table and while I was doing the first morning diaper change Ladybug took it upon herself to dump everything all over the kitchen table and floor...earning her the duty of "cleaning" (I say cleaning but really how well does an almsot 3yr old clean flour....answer is not well and that turned into a meltdown crying bigger mess than it needed to be so she went to her room while i cleaned ) Ok so after that mess was cleaned and her attitude impoved it was frosting time! That was a lot of fun!! I set Ladybug up with a paint brush and a bowl of the frosting, Mister sat in my lap and helped me as best he could with a repidly deteroating attitude.

 (see the N and P letters...those are special for nana and papa!)

Can you tell which ones I did and which ones Ladybug did? :-p

 So those are our crafts for this holiday. We did have a lot of fun all week doing different things. Tonight we are driving up to Nana and Papa's house spending the night and then The Marine and I are leaving in the morning tomorrow to head to Flordia without the children. This will be my first time ever away from Mister for any real length of time and overnights, I am nervous about leaving him because he is still so attached to me but I know he is in good spoiling hands. He needs to bond more with Nana and Papa, more like Ladybug is bonded to them but they have been watching her and doing overnight since she was nearly 11months old, they have spent more time together than Mister has so this will be good for everybody. Maybe I might feel like leaving them both more often and taking more time for me and The Marine? who knows right now!

 So Happy Valentine's Day everybody!!!