Showing posts with label valentines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label valentines. Show all posts
My Dollar Tree had pop rocks in stock. They come with 3 in a package and were still $1 at my store but that will probably change soon.
I made some free Valentine printables to go with them and put 9 on a page because I think the pop rocks packages at the Dollar Tree are smaller?
You can upload them to your favorite photo editing program and add a name and just print them out. I use PicMonkey,
Need more printable Valentine ideas?
 |
| * Taki printable Valentine here |
 |
| * Pencil printable Valentine here |
 |
| * Twizzler printable valentine here |
 |
| * Olympic Printable Valentine here |
It was time to take Christmas down and put up some Valentine love! You can see the video on Instagram of the whole process but here is some porch inspiration:
|
| I love a classic magnolia or green wreath to switch ribbons or embellishments out with the season. |
 |
| * the heart pillows were a favorite find from TJ Maxx this year! If you see them in stock, grab them. This one and and then this one are adorable online choices though. |
 |
| I may switch out the WELCOME mat with this LOVE one from Target (since there isn't enough love already on the porch LOL) 😍 Thanks for stopping by! |
Hello there! I shared the pencil printable Valentine last week but if you missed it or it's not your thing I'll share what my boys are giving this year.
Sam's Club has a 46 pack of Takis for $12.18 and Amazon also has them for a few dollars more we are going with it! It seems to be the popular treat around these parts so I am sharing a printable for you to use. I was going to come up with a cute poem or clever saying but it just wasn't coming so it's just a simple Valentine with fire.
Have a great day -- thanks for stopping by!
Hello! I thought I would share a good deal on pencils today and a printable to go with them for Valentine's Day!
Look at all of these deals on pencils today! So many to choose from -- a great day to stock up and knock out Valentine's all at once.
Look at all of these deals on pencils today! So many to choose from -- a great day to stock up and knock out Valentine's all at once.
Here is a quick example of what it could look like:
I just secured it with washi tape but you could just easily just clip it on and tape the back.
Here is the link to the printables:
Have fun!
Here are some more Valentine posts and ideas.
Hello! My oldest daughter is trying to earn money to go on a humanitarian trip to Mexico this summer and so for Valentine’s day we did a chocolate covered strawberry / chocolate dipped pretzel fundraiser. It was very successful and it would be great for Mother’s Day as well so I thought I’d share what we did. We also did it again for my next daughter, Hailey and have updated it with some things we learned.
We offered 6 chocolate dipped strawberries for $10 and
3 caramel chocolate dipped pretzel rods for $6 with delivery on February 13 or February 14.
*Note: we now only do chocolate dipped strawberries to keep it simple. We offer 6 for $10 or a dozen for $18. Scroll down to see the pretzel/caramel instructions if you would like to see those.
She made up a little digital flyer on PicMonkey
and then texted it to all of our neighbors, church friends, her friends, teachers, leaders, co-workers, etc. Small business owners are great to contact as well to see if they would like to order for their employees. We were going to do some paper flyers but everyone responded really well to the text and email. She received most payments through Venmo and kept track of the orders on a chart.
Here is an updated video on Instagram stories showing the whole process. To keep it simple we only do strawberries and we put them on the mini cupcake liners in the clear hinged container. To see the pretzel rod instruction, scroll to the end.
Here are the supplies you’ll need:
- strawberries (we found the best at Sam’s Club and Costco) – you’ll want to check out who has the best and be ready to buy the day before or morning of. Buy extra because not all strawberries in the package are pretty or ripe.
- milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips (we love Ghirardelli from Sam’s but Nestle Tollhouse work as well) see recipe below.
2. Morning of delivery: rinse all berries and set out to dry on paper towels. They must be completely dry to dip. Separate the pretty berries and save the not so pretty ones to freeze for smoothies or to make jam. We tried to do 2 big strawberries and 4 medium ones per package.
3. Make chocolate dip
Get a large glass microwaveable bowl. Add:
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups milk chocolate chips (or whatever combination you like best.)
4 tsp shortening or coconut oil
Microwave, stopping and stirring every 30 seconds until melted OR you can melt over low heat in saucepan. Don’t overcook!
4. Dip strawberries about 2/3 of the way up, set on trays lined the mini cupcake liners. Let cool in garage, fridge, or freezer (don’t let them freeze though, just enought to cool!)
5. When the chocolate on the strawberries is set, melt the white chocolate in the microwave. We just put a bag of white chocolate chips in a glass bowl, add a Tablespoon or so of coconut oil and melt in microwave. (1 minute, stir, 30 seconds, stir, keep going until it's smooth) and then immediately pour into squeeze bottles with a funnel like this or in a Ziploc bag with a tiny corner cut off and drizzle away!
6. When they are all completely cooled and set, package them up!
A few other tips here:
- as I said before we have learned a lot in our years of doing this and only do strawberries now and just do one day of delivery (usually Valentine's Day right after school but we let them know we are available to deliver to offices as well) and that cuts down on time immensely. If Valentine's is on a weekend that will give you a lot more flexibility or you may want to do it on that Friday. We wash the strawberries first thing in the morning (7 a.m.) in colanders and give them a couple of hours to dry spread out on paper towels and prep everything else in the meantime: set up tables in the cool garage, cut ribbon, get delivery route ready, etc. Start dipping around 10 a.m., white chocolate drizzle around 12, packaging around 1-2 p.m. and then begin delivering at 3 p.m. and try to be all wrapped up by 5 p.m.
- I mentioned earlier to do a trial run! Everyone has different microwaves, pans, chocolate chips, etc. so it’s good to get it down so you know what you are doing the day of.
- Friends are great to help – be sure to have them pull their hair back and wear gloves! We had people dipping, drizzling, running pans back and forth to the garage, cutting paper, packaging, tying ribbons, separating for delivery.
- If you are doing a LOT it may be helpful to have a procession line and have crockpots on warm and keep filling them with melted chocolate.
- You don’t have to offer delivery but most of ours were right in the area around our house. You could also have them come pick them up. It is a perfect fundraiser for Valentines or Mother’s Day!
Good luck! It is a lot of work for the 2 days but she ended up making $900 after supplies (people were very generous to donate extra since it was for a humanitarian trip) so it was well worth it. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!
Caramel Recipe we love:
We offered 6 chocolate dipped strawberries for $10 and
3 caramel chocolate dipped pretzel rods for $6 with delivery on February 13 or February 14.
*Note: we now only do chocolate dipped strawberries to keep it simple. We offer 6 for $10 or a dozen for $18. Scroll down to see the pretzel/caramel instructions if you would like to see those.
She made up a little digital flyer on PicMonkey
and then texted it to all of our neighbors, church friends, her friends, teachers, leaders, co-workers, etc. Small business owners are great to contact as well to see if they would like to order for their employees. We were going to do some paper flyers but everyone responded really well to the text and email. She received most payments through Venmo and kept track of the orders on a chart.
Here is an updated video on Instagram stories showing the whole process. To keep it simple we only do strawberries and we put them on the mini cupcake liners in the clear hinged container. To see the pretzel rod instruction, scroll to the end.
Here are the supplies you’ll need:
- strawberries (we found the best at Sam’s Club and Costco) – you’ll want to check out who has the best and be ready to buy the day before or morning of. Buy extra because not all strawberries in the package are pretty or ripe.
- milk and semi-sweet chocolate chips (we love Ghirardelli from Sam’s but Nestle Tollhouse work as well) see recipe below.
- coconut oil or shortening. We prefer coconut oil but make sure you get the refined (unflavored) kind because some don't like the coconut flavor in the chocolate.
- white chocolate for drizzling. We just use white chocolate chips and these simple funnels to put into little squeeze bottles made it a breeze to drizzle.
- clear hinged containers – we used these from Amazon since we had almost exactly 50 orders, if you have more these are your best deal at Sam’s Club. We use the 5X5 size for 6 count orders and the 8X8 size for dozen count orders. If your strawberries are big you may have to do another layer of a few strawberries so make sure they are deep enough. The ones I linked too were great for us.
- ribbon – I have a huge ribbon stash that we used but this is a good deal on red sheer ribbon or we have found some fun Valentine ribbon at the dollar store. We have also used baker's twine with a cute heart gift tag
- we now use the mini cupcake liners to place the strawberries in. Our strawberries were huge this year so we also used some of the foil standard size or Walmart had some cute red and white Valentine ones in their Valentine baking section for the same price. You can also do some fun paper on the bottom if you want but it's not necessary. We have used red and white polka dot wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby and we secured it with a few small pieces of double stick tape. Scrapbook paper would also work and we also have used red heart doilies from the Dollar Tree.
1. Day/night/weeks before: order supplies online and in stores, cut ribbon, line containers with paper (optional), map out delivery route and let them know what time you’ll be coming. Do a test run to make sure you’ve got the caramel, chocolate, and dipping down.
- white chocolate for drizzling. We just use white chocolate chips and these simple funnels to put into little squeeze bottles made it a breeze to drizzle.
- clear hinged containers – we used these from Amazon since we had almost exactly 50 orders, if you have more these are your best deal at Sam’s Club. We use the 5X5 size for 6 count orders and the 8X8 size for dozen count orders. If your strawberries are big you may have to do another layer of a few strawberries so make sure they are deep enough. The ones I linked too were great for us.
- ribbon – I have a huge ribbon stash that we used but this is a good deal on red sheer ribbon or we have found some fun Valentine ribbon at the dollar store. We have also used baker's twine with a cute heart gift tag
- we now use the mini cupcake liners to place the strawberries in. Our strawberries were huge this year so we also used some of the foil standard size or Walmart had some cute red and white Valentine ones in their Valentine baking section for the same price. You can also do some fun paper on the bottom if you want but it's not necessary. We have used red and white polka dot wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby and we secured it with a few small pieces of double stick tape. Scrapbook paper would also work and we also have used red heart doilies from the Dollar Tree.
1. Day/night/weeks before: order supplies online and in stores, cut ribbon, line containers with paper (optional), map out delivery route and let them know what time you’ll be coming. Do a test run to make sure you’ve got the caramel, chocolate, and dipping down.
2. Morning of delivery: rinse all berries and set out to dry on paper towels. They must be completely dry to dip. Separate the pretty berries and save the not so pretty ones to freeze for smoothies or to make jam. We tried to do 2 big strawberries and 4 medium ones per package.
3. Make chocolate dip
Get a large glass microwaveable bowl. Add:
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups milk chocolate chips (or whatever combination you like best.)
4 tsp shortening or coconut oil
Microwave, stopping and stirring every 30 seconds until melted OR you can melt over low heat in saucepan. Don’t overcook!
4. Dip strawberries about 2/3 of the way up, set on trays lined the mini cupcake liners. Let cool in garage, fridge, or freezer (don’t let them freeze though, just enought to cool!)
5. When the chocolate on the strawberries is set, melt the white chocolate in the microwave. We just put a bag of white chocolate chips in a glass bowl, add a Tablespoon or so of coconut oil and melt in microwave. (1 minute, stir, 30 seconds, stir, keep going until it's smooth) and then immediately pour into squeeze bottles with a funnel like this or in a Ziploc bag with a tiny corner cut off and drizzle away!
6. When they are all completely cooled and set, package them up!
A few other tips here:
- as I said before we have learned a lot in our years of doing this and only do strawberries now and just do one day of delivery (usually Valentine's Day right after school but we let them know we are available to deliver to offices as well) and that cuts down on time immensely. If Valentine's is on a weekend that will give you a lot more flexibility or you may want to do it on that Friday. We wash the strawberries first thing in the morning (7 a.m.) in colanders and give them a couple of hours to dry spread out on paper towels and prep everything else in the meantime: set up tables in the cool garage, cut ribbon, get delivery route ready, etc. Start dipping around 10 a.m., white chocolate drizzle around 12, packaging around 1-2 p.m. and then begin delivering at 3 p.m. and try to be all wrapped up by 5 p.m.
- I mentioned earlier to do a trial run! Everyone has different microwaves, pans, chocolate chips, etc. so it’s good to get it down so you know what you are doing the day of.
- Friends are great to help – be sure to have them pull their hair back and wear gloves! We had people dipping, drizzling, running pans back and forth to the garage, cutting paper, packaging, tying ribbons, separating for delivery.
- If you are doing a LOT it may be helpful to have a procession line and have crockpots on warm and keep filling them with melted chocolate.
- You don’t have to offer delivery but most of ours were right in the area around our house. You could also have them come pick them up. It is a perfect fundraiser for Valentines or Mother’s Day!
Good luck! It is a lot of work for the 2 days but she ended up making $900 after supplies (people were very generous to donate extra since it was for a humanitarian trip) so it was well worth it. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions!
**** Pretzel Rod Instructions *****
Ingredients:
- pretzel rods – we had great luck with Snyder’s, very few were broken. We just bought them at Wal-mart.
- caramel to dip(see recipe below)
- caramel to dip(see recipe below)
- chocolate dip (see recipe above that we use for the strawberries)
- holiday themed sprinkles, if desired
- holiday themed sprinkles, if desired
- clear cellophane bags – these were wider than we needed but ended up working out and are a good quality, stiff cellophane. I think an ideal size would be 7X15
- Buy extra supplies and make extra pretzels! You are going to break some pretzels while dipping and packaging and you don’t want to be running to the store in the middle of it all.
Caramel Recipe we love:
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk – we like Eagle Brand best
Dip pretzels in caramel, lay on wax or parchment paper to cool and take them out to the garage immediately. (if it’s cool out there, otherwise it helps to put them in the fridge or freezer immediately to help them set. It was about 40 degrees here so the temperature in the garage was perfect)
When the caramel on the pretzel rods is set, dip the pretzels in the chocolate. Again, chocolate in a drinking glass is perfect for this. Now is the time to add sprinkles if you would like. We saved some to drizzle with white chocolate and you could also do nuts.
Be super careful with the pretzel rods, they can break easily.
Hello! Can you believe January is over and Valentines is right around the corner?? We got up to see the super blue blood moon but it was very cloudy and just saw a faint orange glow through the clouds. Bummer!
Let’s talk Valentines though!
I finally pulled the Valentine porch together:
The Dollar Tree had the cutest felt hearts this year that I just strung together with some twine for a quick garland.
You can’t beat a Valentine garland for one dollar!
AND here are some printable Valentines I’ve shared in past years:
Olympic Valentine – perfect for this year!
and Twizzler printable Valentines:
Have a great last day of January!
Hello and happy February!
You can buy individually wrapped Twizzlers here and here and choose a printable to go with them.
Whatever one you choose, here are some fun printables I whipped up to go along with them.
Click here for the Yoda ones, 4 to a page
and click here for the heart ones, 4 to a page:
Just print them out on white cardstock, cut them out and attach the Twizzler with a dab of hot glue or some fun washi tape.
A whole $5 tub could set your family for Valentines! Or set out the tub at work or give to a special someone who loves licorice. ♥
I hope you enjoy them!
It’s snowing again.
I thought it would be a good day to put up a Valentine chalkboard on the front porch.
And drape the cart in red, pink, and white.
Boxwood wreaths are the best because you can add just a little something to make them festive! (this is the one I have)
How are you feeling about the snow? I’m still ok with it, but there are some concerns about what’s going to happen when it all melts. It sure does make for cozy winter days inside though.
We got a new bed for Christmas so our bedroom is my next project. I think January and February are the perfect get-things-done-inside months, don’t you?
Hello! So, Valentine’s Day is this Saturday and I just barely put heart decor out this weekend! That’s okay, I’m just happy that it even happened. I have the landmark decision to just decorate my porch for holidays like Halloween, Valentines, 4th of July -- it makes it much more do-able for me and is still fun. Here is what I came up with for a wreath:
Happy ♥ Day, friends!
I wouldn’t mind winter hanging around a bit longer if my front door looked like this:
* speaking of winter, how much snow does it take to cancel school in your neck of the woods?? A map:
Here are our Valentines this year, inspired by the Winter Olympics!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Social Icons