Valentine's Day Sparkling Fruit Punch

The rest of D.C. appears to be going to hell in a hand basket, but love is still in the air over at Chez Green. The kids are drawing up DIY valentines, writing cards to each other, and Cam voluntarily donned hot pink (gasp!) for our Sparkling Fruit Punch post. Head over to Honest to Nod for the sweet (but not sugary!) details on this holiday drink. 

Favorite Valentine's Tops

We are big fans of Valentine's Day in general and this year I feel like everyone needs some extra love! So I might just pick up more than one of these tees for the kids.

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Favorite Valentine's Tops

Our guys love to spread the love on Valentine's Day and that includes sporting something special. From hearts to holiday colors to graphic good vibes, here are our fave Valentine's tops that you can still wear long after the day passes!

For the ladies ....

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For the fellas ....

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DIY Valentines -- Sweet Without The Sugar!

If you follow us on Instagram, you might have noticed that we've started arting hearts in serious earnest. We can't help it. We LOVE Valentine's Day. Kane and Cam actually spent a snowed-in morning this past weekend getting a jumpstart on sweet valentines for each other. Head on over to Paper Source's blog to get the goods! 

P.S. We're also happy to share that we'll be regular guest blogging for Paper Source so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for new posts -- we've got a bunch of great projects lined up! 

Marbled Valentine Candies

Are you running around in a Valentine's Day panic trying to scrape together those class valentines? Stop. Find two ingredients in your home and make yourself some marbled valentine candies. You deserve some love, too. Head over to Honest to Nod for our super easy peasy recipe. You're welcome.

Weekend Makes

In anticipation of Valentine's Day, this Weekend Makes is all about conversation hearts. Whether you love 'em or can't stand the sweet chalky things, Valentine's Day isn't much the same without them. And since we bought a ginormous bag and ate just a few at our Sweet Little Valentine's Day Party, I'm looking for plenty of activities to use them up. And I threw in some conversation heart-inpsired makes for those of you who love the look, but won't be purchasing the candies this year. Make away!

1 / I actually like the taste of conversation hearts, but I'll take a macaron instead any day of the week. So pretty with the gold lettering, too!

2 / Make 'em play for their candy with this tic-tac-toe free printable.

3 / Just what happens to those little hearts once they go down the hatch? Try out some of these science experiments to see.

4 / Mini hearts in a GIANT piñata heart. We loved making little piñatas last summer, so I think we're up to this task.

5 / Make super sweet-smelling paint out of the hearts and whip up some art for your loves.

A Sweet Little Valentine's Day Party

Not that my kiddos need inspiration to get valentine making (they LOVE it), but I thought it would be fun to have a little Valentine's Day Party to get things going. We partied and painted sweet valentines all morning long. Head over to Honest to Nod to check out our fun!

Disclosure: The Land of Nod provided us with party decorations, art supplies, and the canvas floor bin in exchange for this post. No other compensation was provided and all opinions herein are our own.

Valentine's Day Mocktail

Put some extra sparkle in your love's day! Our sweet little Valentine's Day mocktail is over 
at Honest to Nod today. It even has some fruit in it (shhh!). 

Valentine Strawberry Marshmallows

We're really excited today to be sharing our Valentine Strawberry Marshmallows over at Little Hip Squeaks Blog! I've long loved Little Hip Squeaks' brightly colored and modern printed kids apparel, blankets, and accessories. A few months ago I had the chance to meet LHS' founder Amy Richardson-Golia at a Land of Nod event, who was totally lovely and very funny. So I'm super happy to be over at the LHS blog today sharing our YUMMY and fun marshmallow recipe. Go check 'em out!

Hugs + Kisses Confetti Pancakes

One of my most favorite weekend breakfasts growing up was a batch of my mom's "Daisy's Griddle Cakes." I can't quite track down the source of the original recipe, but they are hands-down, the best. pancakes. ever. We've been making them a bunch in our own home and decided to put an extra sweet twist on them in anticipation of Valentine's Day. The kids cooked these from start to finish (with a little help from me reaching over the griddle to the furthest part) and the extra love at breakfast put a smile on everyone's face.

ps -- I can't wait for the natural light in our new house's kitchen!

Artworks: Easy Glitter Bunting

Happy Valentine's! We're are SO excited that our little three-day weekend turned into a five-day break thanks to a lovely little winter storm. We think mom is SUPER happy too. In any event, yesterday, mom was showing us photos of the hearts A Feteful Life made at WestElm's St. Jude charity event this week (WestElm is trying to make the longest heart garland ever and for every heart made, they'll donate $1) and we got to thinking. First we wanted to make our own heart garland. So mom got out a bunch of Valentine's supplies. Then we decided we wanted to decorate just doilies. No problem.

We stuck to our watercolors and loose glitter. We were a little heavy handed on the glue, so mom left them out to dry overnight and strung them up on some baker's twine this morning. They are glinting and glittering in the winter sun! Mom thought it was such a super easy decoration to make because the doilies already have holes in them -- stringing them up took no time at all.

The bunting is up now for Valentine's Day, but we think it would look wonderful for any celebration. Glitter for all!!!

Here's what you need:
- a pack of doilies
- watercolors
- white school glue
- loose glitter
- baker's twine

Just paint your doilies whatever color you'd like. Let them dry just a bit and make a design with glue. Sprinkle glitter liberally. Once they are dry, run the baker's twine through the existing holes on the doilies to make your bunting. Revel in the glitter that will be all over you and your house.

Artworks: Valentine Crayons

We've seen this little project floating around on Pinterest for years and years, but we've never thought much of it. But faced with another day home from school for "weather," mom was on the lookout for an easy holiday craft. And she remembered how much we underestimated the other Pinterest crayon favorite, melted crayon rocks, so we gave it a go. We all LOVED it. Mom liked that it made us all sit around and chat for over an hour and, well, it kept our little fingers busy for over an hour. And we thought it was super fun to unwrap the crayons, which we always want to do when just using them regularly. Plus, you know how we feel about celebrating holidays. And they really turned out very cool abstract patterns. We'll probably put them in a little bag with a tag to use as valentines, but haven't gotten that far yet.

To make the valentine crayons, you'll need:
- a box of crayons (we used a 64 box and made about 40 mini hearts. you could also save up all those random crayon bits from restaurants, parties, etc.)
- a silicone heart mold (we used an old IKEA ice cube tray, but saw similar ones on Amazon -- like these)
- baking sheet
- an oven

Unwrap the crayons and break them into small pieces. You can use a knife to cut them, but we found it super fun to snap them up into bits with our fingers and mom got to avoid the anxiety of letting us use a knife. When all your crayons are in bits, fill each heart mold up to the top. We just used random colors and they came out great. You can overfill them a bit -- we didn't and ours filled the mold up only about 3/4 full when melted.

Preheat oven to 230 degrees. Place molds on to baking sheet and then into oven. Cook for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let them sit for about an hour. Carefully pop out of the molds and marvel at the awesome patterns!

Holidaze: Valentine's Day Bath

Happy Valentine's Day! We kicked ours off early with a little surprise Valentine's themed bath last night -- we loved our tropical island tub so much a few weeks ago, mom couldn't resist setting up another. We knew she was up to something, but were still surprised to find pink, vanilla scented water surrounded by hearts, red streamers and all the pink/purple/red bath toys mom could round up. And Valentine's Day shaving cream tub paint complete with glitter (yes, there is STILL glitter in the tub). We played until we pruned.

In Home Entertainment: Suminagashi Valentines

One of our plans for the Chinese New Year was to bake real fortune cookies and write our own fortunes for them. Back when mom first pinned the idea, it looked easy enough. Then, in the aisles of the grocery store, reading through the recipe, good sense prevailed. She could see a cranky mom and burned fingertips in the future of that plan, so instead we decided to make paper fortune cookies. We started coming up with great fortunes to include, such as "magic is in your future," "you are a princess," and "purple."

It had been a while since we'd done any Japanese suminagashi printing and, well, we thought we'd loop that in for a little Asian fusion and make suminagashi fortune cookies. To start, Kane used mom's circle hole puncher and punched out circles of brown kraft paper -- we tested a few out to see if it would take the ink and it did. It looked really cool in fact. Then we tried to fold them in to fortune cookies. FAIL.

We were getting antsy. Then Kane spotted the heart hole puncher and saved the day by reminding us that it was also almost Valentine's Day and we hadn't made any decorations or valentines yet. A few minutes later we each had a stack of valentines hearts ready to be marbled. It was actually my first time doing this kind of marbling and I LOVED IT. I couldn't get enough. And it was fun to have lots of little hearts to keep the momentum going.

Once they dried and mom pressed them a bit, we took some bright, blank cards and glued the marbled hearts on top. A little sweet message on the back and we had our valentines. As suminagashi printing always ends up producing mass volumes of gorgeous paper, we plan on saving the rest of our hearts for collage making.

This would be easy to do with shaving cream marbling, too. Or, if you're in the mood for another Valentine's Day craft, check out what we made last year:

*valentine's gift cards
*message in a cookie
*valentine's chocolate playdough
*tissue paper stained glass valentines
*tie dyed heart garland

The Sweetest Thing: Message in a Cookie

So we didn't technically have any hand in making these cookies, but boy we did our parts to eat them up.  We had the good fortune of hosting our playgroup on Valentine's Day this year and as soon as mom spotted these on Pinterest, she knew she had to make them.  Well, actually her plan was to have us help make them to give as valentines to my class, but she clearly didn't think through the origins of Valentine's Day before asking my teachers at my Jewish preschool what the V-day plan was.  Doh.

Good thing we are ready and willing to party for any and all occasions and we had a fun V-day celebration at home.  The W&S cookie cutters were sold out online as soon as that pin resurfaced, but we scored some at our local store.  Mom followed the recipe from the Pinterest link (not the W&S recipe) that uses powdered sugar and sour cream and made the most delish, cake-like cookies.  Definitely follow the suggestion to refrigerate the dough overnight and stick in the freezer before rolling it out.  Even then it took mom a lot of practice to get the words pressed in well, but not see the lines of the cookie cutter.  Though some of the technical execution was lacking, they were super yummy.  This probably isn't the best baking activity for kiddos, although rolling out that cold dough would be some good motor skills practice.

These cookies had our name on them -- literally.  And some other things too.  It was really hard for mom to stay within the bounds of appropriateness for a kid's V-day party.  Everything sounds funnier when it's printed on a cookie.  No need to wait for Valentine's Day -- bake these babies up!

a little valentine making station, which resulted in few valentines being made, 

but lots and lots of glitter everywhere.

sweet, sweet and more sweet.  chocolate croissants, the sugar cookies and smoothies for kiddos.  although all the kids ended up with fizzy water and strawberry/raspberry mint heart ice cubes.

bee mine.

mom made some rainbow cheerio bracelets for goodies and everyone 

got some of the chocolate playdough we made.

Barely Scraping By: Biocolor Scrape Resist Painting

Mom generally finds packaged art kits to be underwhelming, but we are so glad she sprung for the Biocolor paint kit from Discount School Supply.  It came with a really great DVD that has tons of projects showcasing Biocolor's unique properties.  And although we probably could have found many of the projects online, we've found the DVD to be a really good starting point for lots of fabulous Biocolor ideas (even though the videos are kind of hokey).  We recently did a scrape resist painting and LOVED it.  We did these for Valentine's Day for our daddy, but it could be done in so many different ways.

To make a resist painting like ours, you'll need:
- a few different colors of Biocolor, including white;
- a scraper (we used the ones that came with the kit, but a strong piece of cardboard, credit card, etc. could also be used);
- and some sturdy paper (we ended up putting layers and layers of paint on ours).

Squirt some white Biocolor on your hands and rub them together.  Then make two handprints on the paper and use the white paint to make any other design or writing that you want to show up.  Next, pick another color and make a design, like a circle or heart, and repeat concentric designs with the additional colors.  You could also just place drops of paint around the page.  Last, use your scraper to scrape the colors out over the page and over the white handprints/words/design, etc.  Whatever color of Biocolor you place on the page first, will resist the other colors -- we also tried using silver as a resist color and loved it.  It's so cool that the colors don't mix (which is why they worked so well on our Chinese New Year's squish dragons).

If you don't have any Biocolor, but want to try another cool scraping project, check this out.