Valentine's Day Breakfast & Decor

Usually every year my family and I have a fancy Valentine dinner at home. We decorate the house, dress up fancy, make a yummy dinner and celebrate! This year however our schedules are just crazy, busy this week and we knew it just wasn't going to happen. So when the blizzard hit here on Friday and Saturday and we all ended up home for several days I knew it was the perfect time to have our little celebration. Instead of dinner though we had a yummy breakfast in our jammies together.

 

While my family was busy doing other things I got everything all set up in the dining room ... I have a box of Valentine decor that I keep to use year after year. Everything was pretty cheap too. Did you know you can buy a package of 24 paper doilies for only ONE dollar?! :)

 

 

candles, confetti, hearts ...

 

We had pink milk, strawberries and delicious cinnamon rolls!

I didn't take pics of the family, no one really wanted pictures of themselves in their pajamas.

You'll have to take my word for it that everyone LOVED the breakfast!



 

So while you're here would you like to see the rest of my Valentine decor??

 

This year I was ADDICTED to making these paper heart garlands! I made 3 and kept looking around the house for more places to make more. I made myself stop at 3 but it was hard not making more!! LOL



 

This one was by far my favorite one.

Red yarn, painted/glittered clothespins, paper hearts and paper doilies ....

 

This is my mantle...

 

I made this a few years ago using scrapbook papers/supplies and a large glittered heart I bought in a package from Walmart or Target {I can't remember!}

 

My jars are the same ones I had out for January but I took out the white candles and put in red one, tied some red yarn around them with paper doilies and stuck in some small hearts. So simple!

 

The print was a free one I found on Pinterest!
The candy in the jar was from the dollar store and thankfully is NOT a temptation for me cause I don't like the taste of those candy hearts! And the paper flowers were made from cupcake liners.

 

On this shelf I just added some red tin wall hangings a cute little 'love' sign that I stamped several years ago and a framed photo of my girls when they were little that I absolutely ADORE!!

 

Is this the cutest picture or what?!

 

Another paper heart garland, this is our TV cabinet ... I painted and glittered the clothespins and cut out paper hearts - so easy and fun!

 

Another thing I made with scrapbook papers ...

 

I took down our snowflakes from January and put up paper hearts!

 

In the kitchen we have some fun, festive details. I use this cake stand to hold all my sink essentials - but now I just made sure everything was pink or red! Pink handsoap, red candle, red dish soap and scrubber...

 

And by tying some tulle around hte candle I can clip more cute paper hearts to it!

 

My coffee/tea/cocoa station also got some festive touches ...

 

And lastly this is above the sink in the kitchen.

 

So there ya go ... super simple and cheap, just use things you already have or save them from year to year in a small box.

 

Happy Decorating and Happy Valentine's Day!!

The Girly Weekend Update

Hey friends! I just realized that a whole week has gone by and I forgot to update on how our girly weekend went last week! If you remember, my hubby was away for the weekend with some buddies, so it was just us girls at home. This is what I posted that we had planned to do together:

Make: * Banana Bread * Pumpkin Bread * Pumpkin/Caramel Butter * Homemade applesauce *A new soup recipe

We also plan to ...
Have a spa night at home, watch movies, sleep in Mommy's room, go to Hope's soccer game, go to church, go to our Bible study group, and if I still have time I might try to work on my current organization project which is my basement/craft area.

Well, we DID get all our baking done … we did 5 loaves of Banana bread, 5 loaves of pumpkin bread, 12 jars of applesauce and 6 jars of the caramel/pumpkin butter. We also had the new soup and great news – it was a hit! A bit on the spicy side but after a LONG day it was great to come home to hot, yummy soup that was all ready to eat. The girls and I gobbled it up!

Hope accidentally turned the mixer onto HIGH and the flour went everywhere! We could NOT stop laughing!

This was our first taste of warm Banana bread with Pumpkin/Caramel butter on it – delish!

The first night we got a movie from the Red Box and did a Spa night. We soaked our feet, did our nails and just relaxed while watching the movie.

Oh and of course, we had a special dessert – brownie sundaes!

On Saturday we went to Hope’s soccer game – which they WON! Then we went to a Fall Carnival at the school where some of our friends go, then we went to see Dolphin Tale at the movie theater. It was a busy, but fun day {no pictures, sorry!}. Then we came home, had the soup and watched The Indian in the Cupboard from Red Box.

I have to tell you – we all LOVE, LOVE, LOVED Dolphin Tale! It was such a wonderful story in a million ways. I swear I had a lump in my throat & tears in my eyes through the WHOLE thing! And I loved that they didn’t add any stupid love story stuff in it so it was great for kids. There was a young girl and boy in it and also a single woman and single man in it – both of which you could ALMOST see how many movies would have made either of them into a romantic type relationship – but not this movie! I just can’t say enough about it, it was great!

On Sunday we got up and went to church, then I got a surprise when my friend offered to take both girls to play with her daughters for the afternoon. So with Bob away and the girls at a playdate I ended up going out to lunch with my Mom and some of her friends, and then running a couple errands. By the time I got home I only had about an hour before I had to leave again for our Bible Study small group. {The girls were there, the hosts are the friends they went to play with.} So I went to Bible study and got the girls and when we came home Bob was home.

All in all we had a GREAT weekend!

Lovin' my Girl time ...

These past couple of weeks while we've been preparing and planning for Christmas have been so much fun for me. The girls are at such a wonderful age where they love to help and be creative. We've been having fun every day doing little things together.

I am so thankful for these two precious gifts we've been given!

Lights, Lights, Lights! (and traditions)

On Friday night the girls and I and my Mom went to this fabulous Festival of Lights. It was held in this adorable shopping village in Mystic. The village is a great place to go anytime of year - it has hundreds of cool little gift shops and a quaint church in the middle and a duck pond. My kids always call it 'the duck place' because there are SO many ducks and the girls love to go there to feed them.

Anyway, this quaint little village is right next to the Aquarium that we love so much. So both the village and the aquarium were having this Festival of Lights the other night. It was free and they had a bazillion lights everywhere and thousands of luminaries lining every walkway. There were also all kinds of musical groups - carolers, children's bands, string quartets, etc ... all spread throughout making beautiful music. Plus of course a couple different Santas - one of which was on stilts!

I will say ... it was wall to wall people! We had a very hard time finding parking and we didn't stay long because it was so crowded and so cold out. But it was still fun and neat to see all the lights and just nice to get out of the house and be festive!

The pictures are terrible, my camera does not take good pictures in bad lighting ... but hopefully you can see a little bit of all the beautiful lights ...





Tradition number 4 ...
THEN, last night we went to our favorite parade all year long. The light parade in a local town here is nothing short of amazing. It's LONG - over an hour! And it's amazing! This isn't your ordinary parade ... no marching bands and politicians and endless amounts of firetrucks. It's tons of gorgeous floats all decorated in lights - in fact the floats are in a contest for the best one. And in between floats are lots of dance troops in great costumes dancing to Christmas music. The whole parade is so much fun, so exciting and so bright with lights. Last night there were two floats that stood out that were just amazing - I couldn't believe we were at our local parade and not some fancy parade like at Disney or somewhere like that!

We went with our friends and the kids had so much fun. Our friends brought along hot cocoa for the kids and of course they got tons of candy which they loved. It was a great evening and is also one of our family traditions - one that I'm sure we will continue for years because it's just so much fun. (And no, I'm sorry but I have no pictures! My friend took some so if I can get them from her I'll post some - otherwise I'm sorry!)

This is what it's all about.

On Tuesday we were all feeling better so we had a fun little family night. We went out to Chili's for dinner, then came home and sat in the living room enjoying the lights from the tree and the glow from the fireplace.

We put on some Christmas music and the girls amused us by dancing around the room and singing the songs out loud. The dog could not be left out of all the merriment and insisted on sitting right next to the tree, in the center of all the action.

Then we put on America's Funniest Home Videos - Christmas Edition and laughed our heads off together at all the funny Christmas antics.

After the girls went to bed I commented to Bob that it was the perfect family evening. Nothing formal or planned ... just fun and merriment and being together. These are the moments I will remember forever.

My week - day seven

Day seven - Sunday. I look forward to Sundays all week. Sunday is my favorite day of the week. Sunday just has a different 'feel' about it. Normally on Sundays we get up and go to church in the morning - this Sunday we skipped - I know, we're bad - I won't even make excuses - we were just bad and didn't go. So this is what we did on this particular Sunday (instead)...

I always start my Sunday by drinking my coffee while browsing the sale flyers from the newspaper. I love to clip coupons and figure out what deals I can get each week. I plan the whole thing out ...
We also had to clean up the house and run to the grocery store on this Sunday. Then I made some home made mac-n-cheese and we headed over to our friend's house for an overnight camping trip. (Lynn and Jason's house).

The kids enjoyed a hay ride around their property (courtesy of Jason) ...
Then they all decorated pumpkins with paints, stickers and pipe cleaners ...
The men guarded the fire and talked sports ... (Tim, Jason, Bob, Mike)
The ladies tried to get a serious picture but were laughing so hard that it was near impossible! (Lynn, me, Caroline and Sandy.)
Jason cooked up a feast! And we had lots of yummy sides with it ...
This is where we camped ... it was freezing! Camping in October around here is COLD! (but I'd rather be cold than hot, so I'm not complaining!) We brought lots of layers of clothes and lots of layers of blankets ...
Lynn and Caroline (up to no good, I'm sure!)
Caroline holding Sandy's baby Rachel - she is such a smiley baby! (look at those cheeks and chins!)
The kids did bag races late at night - they had a blast. Here are the girls ...
We had an awesome time. We were tired and achy the next day from sleeping in a tent but it was so worth it. What a great end to a busy week.

So there you have it - a week in my life. It's never normal, it's never typical, things change from day to day, we sometimes might seem like we never get any school work done, or there's always too much laundry to fold or never enough hours in the day - but it's my life and I love it and I wouldn't have it any other way!