Love is in the air

Warning: Picture heavy post ahead!

So, besides Christmas, Valentines Day is probably one of my favorite holidays. And Easter. And 4th of July. And New Years. Ok, so I like holidays I guess.

This year, we kicked off the "pink" festivities on the 3rd with a batch of pink pancakes for dinner. They were in honor of our dear friends' baby girl, Kennedy Spencer. Yes, I fed my kids artificial coloring for a meal. Life is too short not to have pink pancakes when baby girls are born!

The pancakes were actually quite delicious. Or should I say- Pinkalicious. (Sorry, I couldn't resist. And if you don't get it, you must not have little girls, click here.) :)

Then we had a snow day... or was it two? Anyway, the girls decided they needed a spa snow day, so they took a long hot bath. (Which involved mini water guns, screaming, and more water on the floor than in the tub. Not my kind of spa bath, but whatever.) Then they wanted their nails painted for for Valentines day. Ashley requested red with pink hearts...





and Emily wanted (get ready) clear glitter polish first, then a red heart, followed by pearlescent pink, then white dots for snowflakes around the hearts, and completed with more clear glitter polish.





I didn't notice until looking at these pictures that their fingers and noses look orange. Maybe we need to cut back on the carrots! Gee! lol Ok, so back to Valentines...

Somehow, over the years, giving a Valentine at school changed from being a cute little home-made card cut out of construction paper and white paper doily's into... some sort of commercialized character (often in holographic form) on a card accompanied by either candy, tattoo's, stickers, or some combination of the above. Now, don't get me wrong. My kids love these! And are still treasuring each and every valentine they got from their cutie little friends at school. (The candy was gone in no time.) But this year I decided to bake a cookie for each classmate and make scrapbook paper cards. Cheap, better than candy, and fun. Right? Well, all but the last part maybe...











What I thought would be a quick cookie bake turned into an all day event. First, I got all my stuff ready and figured out I didn't have egg. But then I got resourceful (thanks to some friends' last minute advise!) and used applesauce. Then I went to frost them and realized I didn't have enough powdered sugar to make the frosting. So I got resourceful again, found some chocolate chips and made a chocolate drizzle. The girl classmates still got pink frosting with hot pink sprinkles. It was VERY important. And thankfully there are way more boys than girls, so we were okay. Whew. ;)







And I will say, the girls did a great job cutting out their little papers and writing all their friends' names.

Emily's:


I'm not sure where Emily learned to make those fancy A's. I didn't teach her and I can't imagine she learned it at school. I asked her why she was making her A's like that and she said "I just like it better." Hm. Ok.

Ashley's:


Each of Ashley's had a little picture that had some special meaning for that friend. So cute.

The finished product:




I realized after the party that poor Libby can't have gluten and wouldn't be able to eat her cookie. :( I'm sorry Mindy!!



And as if 3 or 4 dozen cookies wasn't enough (we made enough for Micah and Abby's classes too), the girls' school was having a little contest for best Valentines box. It had to include their name and a scripture. So given that I'm slightly obsessed with scrapbook paper, these boxes were kind of fun to me. :) The paper was really stiff so we had to hot glue it (we used Capri Sun boxes). So the girls designed their boxes, cut out their names and hearts, and I hot glued my night away.





Not sure why they felt the need to make these crazy faces while holding their boxes, lol! Not sure why they are wearing these random clothes that don't match or fit the season either.....











For the record, neither of them won. :/ But I'm okay with that. The winners were super cute and way more creative than ours. Emily's class winner's box was a huge sword made out of boxes and foil with the scripture "above all else, guard your heart". How cute is that?!



So, to further complete the beautification process from their spa day, they decided that they wanted me to curl their hair the morning of their Valentines Parties at school. And because magical things happen when school is delayed 1 hour because of left-over ice and snow, I actually did it. And they both looked adorable!

Behold the super-cute curls:


Emily's hair is super straight and I didn't think it would hold, but it even lasted into the next day! I could tell during her party that when she would turn, she'd give an extra-dramatic twist because she could feel the curls bounce. ;) lol Yep, thats my girl. (You can't really see the curls from this shot, but it was the best one I had.)



And because I've already added a bzillion pictures, I'm gonna show you this one. How is it that I have to wear eyeliner to look like my 7 year old who (obviously) has zero makeup on in this picture?! Look at her eyes! I didn't even use the redeye tool thingy that sometimes (and irritatingly) makes your whole eye black. She's just naturally gorgeous. :)



So how about MY Valentine? Mr. Jake Spencer? Weeeell, he and I are going out tomorrow night. We've got a baby sitter lined up and I'm going to have a romantic dinner out with the hottest guy around. I won't be blogging or posting pictures of our Valentines night. Sorry folks, thats where the show ends. ;)

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!!