"Sweet" Valentines Day Treats

Happy Valentine's Day!! Hope your day is filled with love and family :) Here are the homemade Valentine's I made for the kids to pass out to their classmates. These were a super easy and inexpensive project and are so much cuter than handing out a boxed Valentine. All you need are some plastic spoons, one bag of milk chocolate chips and a half bag of chocolate candies. Melt the chocolate chips in a bowl and spoon into the spoons. Press in candies and pop in the fridge on a baking tray. Cool until chocolate is firm. Then wrap in cellophane or plastic wrap. I'm pretty sure there are little cellophane spoon baggies made just for projects like this but since it was last minute I used what I had...plastic wrap. Create a cute card on cardstock and tie to spoons with ribbon :) Kids will love eating these and they are great for coffee lovers too (for stirring spoons)! I made an extra for me ;)

Check out these beautiful roses that arrived on my doorstep! Aren't they pretty?! My hubby did good! And for him I'm planning a little dinner date tonight. I'm going to bake the kids a yummy pasta dish and then set up little tv trays in my son's room where they can eat while watching a movie. Then I'm gonna whip up a little filet mignon with portobello mushrooms and roasted asparagus for me and my hubby...and I don't even like mushrooms..I must love him :) The plan is to pan sear the filet and finish in the oven. I've never done it before so wish me luck! Happy Valentine's Day!! (update in next post)

Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween...a day late!! I hope everyone had a fun and safe night of trick-or-treating and fall festivals! It was a freezing and windy evening here (thanks to the effects of Sandy) but we braved the the cold and made our rounds thru the neighborhood collecting treats and chatting with the neighbors! This year both of my sisters and their children, as well as my brother and my parents all did trick-or-treating together. It is chaotic getting us all ready but everyone had a great time. We even had an unexpected guest during our walk, a large deer who came bounding out of nowhere right thru our group and then vanished into the woods behind some houses. He came through us like lightning and some of the group only heard the hoofs on the pavement because he was here and gone so quickly. We live in a very populated large neighborhood so this encounter was definitely not the norm but very cool. Luckily he didn't collide with anyone but he was very close! I think we talked about it for 30 minutes afterwards because it got us all so excited, lol! It will definitely be a memory that won't be soon forgotten!

The kids finished the evening with quite a large candy haul and I think we'll be set with sweets until Easter (yikes)!! In addition to the candy, my sister made everyone some delicious caramel/chocolate apples for dessert so that we'd all be sugared up for sure. Yum!! I hope you had as much fun as we did. I am sooo ready for this holiday season!! It's my favorite time of year...I can almost hear the jingle bells :)