Valentine Digital Kit

So, I have been working on some clipart that I drew for Valentine's Day. My daughter saw me working on them and wanted to draw some too. Sure why not? Then I had an awesome idea to turn her drawings in to the clipart and make her Valentine cards from them.

So, here is the kit I made and it is on sale in my Etsy Store. All proceeds will go to her. There are 10 cliparts (the words are all separate except the Bee mine) and three 12x12 papers.
Here is my daughter's Valentine. We had a fun little photo shoot too!

Amazing Race Valentine's Edition

Here it is. The day where it all comes together. This was a month in a half planning. We all dropped off the guys at the beginning and came back to my house to get started. We had to move the couches from the front room to the other room so that we could set up the tables. My sister did a quick vacuum and then we started setting up.
Here are Marie and Cherie cutting up the potatoes.
Susanne got to preparing the tissue paper pom poms. They turned out SO cute. She did such a good job.
Kristine started cutting out the candy bar wrappers and then putting them on the Hershey Bars. You can tell she's a lot of fun. Miss goofiness.
Just a picture of the prep.
Karen (on the right) was the hostess of the race and had part of it at her house. They cut up items for the guys to dip and then took it over to her house. Anita did it too. So the choices that the guys had to dip are: Strawberries, pineapple, bananas, Angel food cake, brownies, marshmallows, pretzels and Pringles.
Tiani is our little decorator and she did such a good job.
For one of the games we had the guys do we first had to kiss the paper with lipstick on. Then the guys had to guess which lips belonged to their wife. It was making everyone laugh to do this. Especially when I was taking a picture of them doing it.
Here are a couple shots of the tables. I think they turned out really cute. I got most of the items to decorate from the dollar store. Woo hoo!
We also used plastic plates and (real looking) utensils. I had a whole box of goblets so we were able to use those. The decorations (from the dollar store) we used were: square glass mirrors, red plastic table cloths, round glass dishes, glass stones, and rose petals. The candles were Parylite so they didn't come from the dollar store. Also the very center pieces (big candle and big glass vase) came from my sister.
A little side view of the room.

To go with the theme of Valentines, I made up some heart shaped butter. The molds I used to make the hear shaped ice cubes were used for the butter. They tuned out awesome.
So, here are what my husband dipped in chocolate for me. He got two out of the three right.
Here is what each girl wanted:
Anita - Cake, strawberry, banana -
Me - Brownie, strawberry, cake - Mine got two right. (As you can see from the picture.)
Marie - Strawberry, pretzels, Pringles
Cherie - Strawberry, banana, pretzel
Kristine - Strawberry, Pringles, banana
Tiani - Strawberry, pineapple, banana
Susanne - Strawberry, pretzels, brownies

I forget who got what right. Maybe I'll ask the girls and see if they remember.
Just a glimpse of what the baskets looked like after the guys came back.
So here is what our "Heart's Desire's" were:
Anita - Trivet
Cherie - Scrapbooking
Susanne - Jewelry (you can see what she got from the picture below.) It lights up!
Kristine - Vase
Me - Apron or splash guard (I got a frame.)
Tiani - To be a mother - She got a plastic egg. That made us laugh over.
Marie - Chocolate
Here is a close up of the ice cubes. The fruit punch with the Sparkling Cider was a yummy combination.
I got pictures of all the couples next to the sign. Here is us!
All the girls!
I had to put this in. You know the lip game I was talking about?
Well some of the guys were REALLY trying to make sure they got the right lips. Ken was studying Cherie's lips for awhile. I think I got a few pictures out of them.
Glen had Karen kiss his cheek so he could cheat. Really, he guessed before he had her kiss him and he was actually the only one who got it right.

Karen was our hostess for the night and Glen was our videographer. What an awesome job he did too. He had some funny commentary the whole time. Made us laugh a lot.
So, here is what the room looks like. Tiani also has flower petals on the window sills and candles lit. The ambiance of the room was really nice.
What we put on the garage door so the guys could see.
Our lovely couples eating. I took a lot of pictures but one of the things I didn't take a picture of was the plate of food. You can probably click on the picture and see it up close if you want to see the food.

This was the dinner we ate:

Tri-tip cooked over wood in a smoker.
Roasted potatoes
Rolls
Spinach apple salad
Caesar salad
Sparkling cider with fruit punch ice cubes
Cheesecake with heart shaped strawberries, chocolate syrup and a sprinkle of powdered sugar.
After we ate we all went into the other room and watched the video footage. I had to get a picture of everyone laughing at the music video that the guys did. They chose "Can't Touch This" and we were all impressed at what the guys came up with and also that they let loose and made it funny.
Just the other decoration we did. Each one has the terms of endearment we call the other spouse (and them to us.)
What was written:

S+J
Handsome love Beautiful
Schmoopy love Wiffee
Mrs B. & Mr S.
Lovey Bear loves Lovey
Slick loves Scatt
Aaron + Marie 4ever
Man + Lady Forever
So, here are the cards the guys made. See!?! Didn't I tell you they had the mad scrapbooking skills? They all did such a good job. Bryan was telling everyone that he was so good because he got my scrapbooking skills through osmosis.

The guys came in the house with these wonderful wild flowers that they tied up with grass. Pretty clever huh? They did such a good job with everything. I think they love us or something.

Just a closeup of the candy bars.
All in all, the date was a smash hit. The guys did everything so well. Better than we expected. I'm hoping to get some pictures of the guys while doing each task so you can see. We do have a bunch of video and that will be fun to go through. Woo hoo!

Amazing Race Valentine's Edition Preparations

I'm trying to figure out how to put this post together. I think I am going to do all the preparations here and what the guys did and then the next post will be what us girls did while we were waiting and after they got to the final destination. I got this idea from Me And My Insanity. I just LOVED the idea and told my friends about it and they were on board immediately. We started to plan this in January and did the actual date on Feb 27th. There was too much going on for all of us the 13th and 20th so that's when we did it. I definitely got a lot of Valentines stuff for cheaper since V-day was already over.

Here are a few of the preparations we did before the actual day. My sister came over one Saturday and we painted some signs. It was hard because we had to make sure that my husband didn't see them.
My daughter getting in on the picture.
I decided that we just HAD to have heart shaped ice cubes. I made up some Crystal Light Fruit Punch and used up the whole thing making these awesome ice cubes.
Susanne came over and helped out with the shirts. It went by really fast. We did 8 shirts of each color.

First of all, I did all the graphics for the race. I had fun and planning everything was crazy but in the end it was a lot of fun and it all turned out awesome.

This is the "flag" that was at each place. They were put on the doors so that the guys could see that they were at the right place.

Before I move on I want to tell you all the places I had planned for the guys to go and do.
1. A scrapbook store - Make a Valentine's card
2. The dollar store - Find their wives "heart's desire."
3. A chocolate shop - Make a couple pieces of chocolate.
4. Our community club house - The final destination - Where dinner would be.
5. A person that we know that had a huge fruit orchard. - Their physical task - Picking a bucket of fruit.
6. Our church's stage - To make a music video.

Is that what we did? Nope. We only were able to do one of those things. That was the Dollar Store. We had to improvise and use our houses for the other things. So here is what they actually did.

1. The Dollar Store - Get their wives "Heart's Desire." (We would tell them as we dropped them off at the starting place what our heart's desire was and they would have to remember that when they got there.)
2. Player #1's barn - Make a music video using a song from the list we gave. The list? "I'm Too Sexy," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" and "Can't Touch This."
3. Player #2's house - Make a Valentine's card with the scrapbooking supplies given.
4. Back to the house they started at - Dip items in chocolate. They had to pick the three items (out of 8 given) that their wife would choose to dip in chocolate.
5. Road Block - Clean up the mess they made dipping chocolate.
6. My house - The finish line and dinner.
7. One of the tasks during the whole race was to get flowers for us too. For Free!

Some friends of ours were gracious enough to be the hostess and videographer of the race. She gave her little introduction and read off the rules. We had there a basket and their "uniform" which was a shirt that I designed and did an iron on that said I love my wife.

Then she sent them on their way after she got a picture of them. I don't know if you can see buy my hubby said that they held the baskets up with their pinkie finger sticking out. My handsome man is the one on the far left.
Here are the rules that she read to them.

So, here are the clues that we came up:

Clue #1 -
During this race some flowers you must find.
Make sure they're FREE. Use your mind.
Creativity is the best way to go.
Now hop to it. Ready...Set...GO!!!

This was given before they left the house.


Clue #2 -
Money doesn't grow on trees.
But you can get these almost free.
Her "heart's desire," did you hear?
Find an item over here.

This took them to the Dollar store where they had to find the item that their wife told them they wanted. I was a stinker and didn't come out and say the actual item that I wanted so my husband had a harder time trying to figure out what it was. The other guys did very well.

Clue #3
Choose a song that calls to you.
Dress up, so it's fun to do.
Point the camera at the stage.
Dance and sing. It's all the rage.

This took them to the barn where they chose a song and actually did a little dance routine. I was pretty happy to see the thought that went into it. (We watched the video later.) We had some nice props for them to wear too.

Clue#4
Make a love card. Please don't scrimp.
Or she'll think that you're a shrimp.
Make it nice so she'll be proud.
Or it will be read aloud.

They got to the house and went to work right away. I have to tell you that these guys have some MAD scrapbooking skills. I will put a picture of what they did in the next post. I was pretty pleased at what I saw.

Clue#5
Your wife likes to dip chocolate. What would they be?
From all of these choices, pick only three.

This is where they had to pick the three items out of the eight to dip.

Clue#6
Just one more thing you have to do.
Clean the mess that somehow grew.
After that you're almost done.
One more clue...Let's have some fun.

This was the "Roadblock" part of the race. We just made them clean up so that Karen wouldn't have to later. There wasn't much to do so they were done real fast.

Clue#7
Now that you finished running this race.
Go find some dinner at this place.
Your sweetheart is waiting with food in hand.
And she'll give a kiss to her favorite man.

They just had to gather all the stuff they accumulated and walk over to my house where we had the place decorated and ready. Actually, they were done with the last task faster than we thought and we made them wait at the door for a minute while we lit the candles and put the ice cubes in the glasses.

To be continued (with a ton of pictures).......


Here are some other people who did this race as well_
Catching Up With the Conners
Ridgecrest Review

Amazing Race Valentine's Edition

This is just a sneak preview of what I will be blogging about soon. It is going to be a Huge post because I am going to tell you everything. I will be doing a preparation blog first then the actual date in a separate blog.
Stay tuned!!

Martha Stewart Valentines Crafts

I went through the Martha Stewart website to see what kind of cute crafts I could do for Valentines day and found a ton of cute things. You can check out the gallery here!

Here are my favorites:

Candy and Tulip Bouquet

Crayon HeartsButton Napkin Rings (I don't know how Valentiney this is but it's cute!)
Heart-Shaped Soap There is also a video that you can watch.
Valentine Flowers
Romantic Wrapping Paper Reallly cool idea. I never thought of this before.

Heart Bookmark

Chocolate Wrapper
Sentimental Valentine's Day Wheel

Miniature Valentine's Day Gift Bags


Paper Heart Wrappings

Paper Cut HeartsThere are about 48 different craft that you can do so go check them all out. These were just the ones that I really liked.
Watch out for more posts with Valentine's Day Ideas!