Hope you have a wonderful day with all of your loves!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

P.S. Find this delicious cookie recipe here!

I found this idea on the Pleasant Home Kitchen blog for quick and easy Valentine’s treats. I just happened to also have left over candy canes from Christmas to use up as well! Look how sweet these are:

It took very few ingredients:

candy melts, candy canes, sprinkles, and lollipop sticks. Since I made so many cake pops around Christmas, I had plenty of lollipop sticks and bags left over! Not to mention quite a collection of candy melts

I filled the candy cane hearts and my son quickly added the sprinkles!

I hope his classmates love them!

You’ve got time – go try some!

This month’s Sandbox press issue was a project designed with my son in mind! I found the original idea here!

My preschooler is becoming more and more independent. He is learning to do so many things on his own but there is one thing I still have to help him with or I know it won’t be done – washing his hands! With winter colds and the flu spreading so quickly amongst little ones, hand washing is a habit I want to cultivate. This month’s craft will hopefully help with that!

These soaps are easy to make and involve getting your hands messy – with soap – so kids love it! The soap is formed into a snowball around a special surprise that is revealed as your child washes his or her hands. Hand washing will become more regular as your child anticipates the special treat inside. Have your child help you pick out the small treasures at the store to increase the excitement to play with them!

Supplies:

Food Processor or cheese grater

3 bars of Ivory soap (or any other white soap)

1/3 cup warm water

4 tiny plastic toys (check age appropriateness for your child)

Makes 4 snowball soaps.

Steps:

1. Use a food processor with the grater tool to grate the bars of soap. Alternatively, you can use a cheese grater to shred the soap by hand, but this will take much longer.
2. Pour the grated soap into a large bowl.
3. Have your child pour the warm water over the soap and start to mix it together with his or her hands. The mixture should be squishy and moldable. Use a little more water if necessary to get the right texture.
4. Scoop up a handful of soap (about ¼ of the mixture) and mold it into a shallow cup in your hand. Place one of the small toys on the soap and mold the soap around it into a ball.  Repeat for three more snowballs.
5. Let the snowballs dry completely before using – about 4 hours.  
   Want a snowball soap but don’t feel like making one? No problem! Enter the GIVEAWAY here! Just leave a comment on this post telling me you favorite (or least favorite) thing about snow before February 28th! Make sure your email is correct!  I’ll choose a random winner at the end of the month! Good luck!

I posted the first baby quilt I made for Sadie a few months ago here. Following the theme, I made 2 more: one for baby button and one for baby Eli – both due in late March.

Since the babies are practically twins by due date (although not  by parents), I made them pretty similar. Eli is a boy and deserved a fun blue blanket:

Buttton is unknown, so he or she got a fun green quilt. Some of the fabrics have been used before and some are from his or her Grandma:

Button’s is backed with Green fleece and Eli’s is backed with white minky fabric. They are not filled with anything to make them thicker since I think most kids like a light blankie to drag around – at least my kids do!

I can’t wait to hold those babies!

I had a plan to make something fun for Katie’s room for a while now. I finally found time yesterday while Katie napped and Ethan painted his own paintings of Curious George. Can you guess what it is:

How about now?

How about this one?

Or:

Did you guess it? It’s a….

whale! Isn’t she cute? To give you some perspective on the size of it, here it is in her room:

I think she is happy with it.