Cute Valentine's Treats for Children

Valentine's Day has always been a big deal in our house.  It stems back from my fond memories or making the valentines boxes at school, and dropping valentines into my friends' boxes, going home and reading them over.  Such fond memories.  I have mostly always done goodie bags for this holiday with lots of candy, pencils, stamps, whatever we could find that was pink!  This year however, Kinley wanted to do a craft.  And this weekends weather was supposed to be atrocious, so we figured what better time than now.  Kinley scoured Pinterest for a very long time before settling on 2 projects that she wanted to try. She simply couldn't pick between them and being a craft lover myself, I agreed to both.

The first option she chose was a Unicorn foam heart Valentine.  These are the items you would need as well as scissors and glue (I used a hot glue gun).

I wanted just plain foam hearts but at the 2 stores I checked I could not find any in the size that I wanted so I bought this kit at Hobby Lobby and just used the hearts out of it.  It wasn't a bad deal with a 40% off coupon. The lollipops I bought at Walmart and they were 20 for $4.99.  I did find some on Amazon, but they were more expensive, and they were not prime eligible.  We chose a glitter foam sheet that we found at Walmart, but any craft store sells them. Lastly, you need rainbow yarn.  The kind we bought created extra work and I will explain why.  In the original tutorial we seen on how to make these, they had recommended wrapping the yarn around your hand 8-10 times and then simply cutting both sides to make the hair.  Our yarn did not change colors often enough for this method.  We ended up cutting about 4inch strips and just let Kinley bunch them together for each one. 

To start out, you would gently fold your foam heart in half and make a small cut with scissors to make room for the lollipop.

Next, we got a good pile of hair (yarn) together and tied one of the 4-inch strips around it to keep it together.  Put a dab of glue on the back and place this just slightly above your cut for the lollipop.  From here, I hand cut the ears out of the glitter foam.  They may have looked better if I had a template but hey A for effort.  We chose to draw the eyes last so we could line them up better with our ears.  Last, you slide your lollipop in the hole to make it appear to be the Unicorn horn.  It is an adorable and tasty Valentines treat.

The next project we decided to do was this cute little glitter candy bug.  These are the supplies you will need along with scissors and some type of glue.  We used mod podge for this project.

The googly eyes we got from Walmart for $.98, the pipe cleaners and clothespins are both from Hobby Lobby, but you should be able to find them at Walmart.  We used a fine glitter from the Dollar Tree in their new craft section.  Lastly, you need some kind of treat that the sides can fan out like a butterfly.

First things first…. glitter!!!!!  The way we went about this is by coating one side of the clothespin with mod podge and then putting on our googly eyes, then mod podged around them.  It can be difficult to glue items to glitter so that is why we did eyes first, glitter immediately after while the mod podge is still wet.  Because I know how messy loose glitter can be, we decided to do a second layer of mod podge over the glitter to help keep some of it in.  I hope the parents of the recipients appreciate that.  You will want to let your mod podge fully dry before you continue.

For your body, you need some kind of treat that can be moved to the side of the package.  We used m&m's, but you could use fruit snacks or anything else similar in size.  You will want to pinch the middle of the treat package together to create an illusion of wings.  Take half of a pipe cleaner (just fold them in half and cut to easily find the center) and wrap it tightly around the candy. Use the leftover length to create whatever type of antennae's you would like for your cute little butterfly.

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Cutting an Image With Vinyl to Create a Great Gift

My sister has lived in another state for most of our lives
so when it comes to gift giving it's a little difficult. I don't get to see her
daily or even weekly to pick up on little things she likes.  I don't know what color scheme her house is
since she has moved since our last visit. 
But what do know is that she LOVES her dog.  How could I incorporate her dog into a gift I
could make with my Cricut?  There are
tons of options.  I decided to go with an
image on vinyl on a pillow.

First, I snuck off to her Facebook to find a perfect picture
of the pup.  Now to get an image into a
vector file you can use on your Cricut, there are a few ways.  I decided to use an app called Imaengine that
is available for Apple products. 

You upload the picture and turned it into an ink file.  On the app, you can clean it up as much as you would like by changing the threshold, freckles, and other specs.  I love this app so I paid the fee to be able to download the images I create because why shouldn't I support the developer of such a cool app??  From there you can upload the image into Design Space and clean it up more if you would like to, but it is not needed at all.  My sisters' dog is black, so I used matte blank iron on vinyl (make sure to cut it as a mirror image).

Cricut SportFlex Iron On Vinyl, DIY Supplies, 11.8” x 24” HTV Roll - Black

 For the pillow covers,
I wanted something a little rustic so off to Amazon I went for something with a
burlap look to it.  These are what I settled
on.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07C6MTY9F/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tlHome Brilliant 2 Pack Burlap Decorative Pillow Covers Lined Linen Cushion Sham for Living Room, 18x18 inches, Light Linen

 I was very pleasantly
surprised when they arrived.  They were
great quality and exactly the look I was going for.  They were also thick enough that I didn't
need to worry about the heat from my press ruining them when applying the vinyl.

She was absolutely thrilled when she received it and bonus,
it actually matched her house!!

How I Worked Around Our Small Bedroom

Our bedroom is small….like really small.  It's one of those rooms that only has one solid wall.  It has 3 doors and one window.  It makes it very hard for room setup options.  Now before we bought this place we splurged on a big old king sized bed (that I think we are still paying on) so downsizing the bed was not an option for me.  Basically, we have too much stuff and not enough room.   I tried a couple of room configurations that just wouldn't work because of one reason or another.  A big problem in a lot of these was not being able to pull the dresser drawers out far enough.  So off to IKEA we went. 

I was thinking outside of the box here.  My traditional husband however went right to the plain old dresser section.  He looked at me like I was crazy when I said we need something that could function like a dresser without being an actual dresser.  I wanted sliding doors of some sort to alleviate the pulling out space issue.  So, we stumbled upon this storage cabinet with glass sliding doors.  It was the perfect height.  I loved the look of it, but could it function as a dresser??  Now my husband does all the laundry (yes, I am spoiled in that aspect) and he does not fold any of his own clothes.  So, with glass doors, it would always look messy and I knew that would stress me out.  It's the one thing I despise about our house being entirely open concept is that there is nowhere to hide the mess.  By this point, the kids were tired, and I was overwhelmed so we left emptyhanded

That night I went home and looked around my room and just knew there had to be a better solution.  We scoured the internet for the perfect dresser and oh we found some that were way outside of our little budget.  I just kept going back to the same item I seen at IKEA.  Finally, I thought of a compromise.  I could simply frost the glass!  This would allow me the sliding doors that would work in our room, as well as my husband the freedom to not fold his clothes without stressing me out.  What a breakthrough.  Back to Ikea we went to but this unit.  While building it, I still had some concerns.  We had 8 drawers in our old dresser, and this only had 5 shelves.  Would it be large enough to fit our clothes?  Would the frost cover enough to not make me lose my mind?  The answer to the first question is a resounding yes.  It has more space than our dresser due to the height of the shelves.  I did 2 coats of frost in the worst conditions possible.  I will admit it did not frost as well as I had pictured in my head but that is totally an error on my part and could be corrected when the weather warms up.  It did cover enough for me to not be stressed out though.

We are one week in and so far, I am loving this upgraded dresser option which costs significantly less than a traditional dresser.

I need to find a better picture that doesn't make it appear as smeared as this. This is not what it looks like in person.