Happy Valentine's Day!

This could probably be 3 separate posts, but in the interest of time I am combining them. It's a post medley!

Lucas is currently cooking up a Valentine's dinner feast: Pasta with Sausage, Basil, and Mustard, salad with homemade vinaigrette, garlic bread, and caramelized broccoli. He is the best!

Lincoln and I made strawberry swirl pancakes today for lunch. So festive! I thought they were pretty good. Lincoln only ate a few bites, but he had also eaten a sugar cookie, a yogurt cup, and half a banana while he was waiting for me to finish cooking the pancakes. It was a late lunch-2:30ish-so I needed to tide him over :)

Recipe, for those who might want it:

Multigrain Pancakes with Strawberry Swirl

adapted from allyou.com magazine, August 27, 2010 issue

Ingredients:

3/4 cup whole-wheat flour

1/4 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup quick cooking oats

2 Tbsp. cornmeal

2 Tbsp. brown sugar (oops...I forgot to add this. Mine turned out fine without it, so feel free to leave this out)

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup milk

1/4 cup applesauce (or yogurt)

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter, melted

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

Strawberry ribbon:

1 cup strawberries (fresh or frozen)

2 Tbsp. sugar (I used vanilla sugar, which was delicious)

Directions:

1. Make strawberry puree: place strawberries and sugar in a small saucepan over medium low heat. Cook until strawberries are soft and can be mashed into a puree (about 10 minutes).

2. Whisk together flours, oats, cornmeal, brown sugar (if using), baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk milk, applesauce (or yogurt), butter, egg, and vanilla. Stir milk mixture into flour mixture until just combined.

3. Spoon strawberry puree into batter and lightly stir--do not completely blend in! It should look ribbon like!

4. Preheat a large skillet or griddle, coated in cooking spray. Pour batter 1/4 cup at a time onto surface, spreading into circles or whatever shape you desire. Cook until bubbles form on tops of pancakes, about 2 minutes. Flip pancakes and cook until light golden and cooked through, about 1-2 minutes longer.

And now, an appearance from everyone's favorite robot....Wo-dat Lincoln! He gonna fiiiiind you....

And finally, my one Valentine's craft project. Soooo simple, and adaptable for other holidays, too!

1. Gather sticks from your yard.

2. Paint them white with tempera paint.

3. After they dry, stick them in a vase.

4. Cut out hearts from scrapbooking paper and hang them from the "tree" using thread.

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Valentine's Day Tutorial

I don't normally decorate our house for Valentine's Day, or really any holiday other than Christmas, but since one of my goals this year is to make one handmade item a month...I figured, why not? This project was really easy and adds some nice color to the living room. Plus, it can be reused next year--even better.

Supplies needed:

Red/Pink/Heart/etc. cardstock (found mine in the scrapbooking section at JoAnn's)

This font (it is free to download)

colored pencils, crayons, or markers

glue

scissors

sewing machine and thread

You can make these any size you like, but just to give you an idea, mine are 5"x5" squares.

1. Cut out your squares from the cardstock. I used a solid color square for the background and glued a smaller printed square on top. I also chose to make 2 hearts to hand on either side of my banner.

2. Install the font onto your computer. Using your word processing program, type the letters L-O-V-E...I had to enlarge it to about size 350 in order for it to be big enough for my squares. Seriously. It is the tiniest font ever (at least on Macs...).

3. Print out your letters, color in the hearts, and cut them out--I was fine just using scissors, but if you have a craft knife, that might be handy.

4. Glue letters onto squares.

5. Using your sewing machine, sew a decorative border around each square and heart.

6. Done!

Happy Valentine's crafting! If you have any fun ideas, I'd love to see them--please leave a link in the comments!