Valentine's Celebration....

Our traditional Valentine Fondue ...with a Sharp Cheddar Fondue, crusty bread chunks, slightly steamed veggies and tiny, cooked new potatoes.

There was a milk chocolate fondue with banana chunks and pound cake cubes for dessert, but I guess I was too busy savoring to get a photo!

We had lots of these pretty decorations hanging. They are just made from strips of cardstock...you can see how they are made by noticing the staples in the photo. We made a few to mail to Naya and Sodie at college. They fit just right into a box with these little gifties:

2 pillowcases made with love !

...and here a the Valentines pillowcases for the 2 sweeties still at home with me :)

Check the purple socks with patent leather slippers...hoo-boy!

Some more lovely decorations for the day.

We recieved this texted photo of a brand new baby cousin born in the evening of this special day!

Toucie wrapped up the day with a candle-lit rose petal bath.

Happy Valentine's Day to you all :)

Crafting away our cabin fever...

After the tease of a beautiful sunny weekend, our temperatures have dropped again into the 20's (F). While we are troopers in the Waldorf style, and venture out in all kinds of weather, the hours we spend outdoors on cold days are much fewer than the ones we spend out on fair days, for certain.

So, driven indoors, yearning to be out and for spring to speed to our door, we have needed to find inspired ways to wait out these last dregs of winter weather. Handwork is our friend. And so are other folks who like to make lovely things.

 

Here are the petals from our Valentine's Day roses.

 

Here is Toucie threading them onto a length of wire.

 

Here is an idea of what the process looks like...slow results...stick with it, Touce!

And here is the fruit of all that persistence.  

A happy hour spent sifting fingers through soft and fragrant rose petals, building on the ability to persevere, developing the strength in little hands, and feeling pleasure and pride at producing a worthwhile creation...a gift to entice Spring to hurry to us. 

Perhaps this happy hour, and the many others we spend like this, are Winter's last gifts to us.

Valentine's Day

We spent a beautiful day celebrating "lovingness" , as Toucie calls it. There was crafting and baking, and gifting, and eating, and dancing, and everything else we could fit in.

 

Toucie and I baked a cake for breakfast.

  

As soon as the crumbs were cleared, we sat down to work on some pretty gifties for each other. 

Our Candlemas hyacinth centerpiece had started fading a tiny bit, so we cropped the flowers and Toucie spent a happy hour plucking off the individual blooms and stringing them into lovely adornments:

 

  

  

Even I was the happy recipient of one of the flower strands!

I  found time to put the finishing touches on the flannel quilt I'd been working on (#7 on my list!), so that became my Valentine to all the girls:

  

Two of my girls had dates...look at these awesome socks:

But by dinnertime, we were all back together again. We have a family tradition of preparing fondue for Valentine's Day dinner. This year it was a cheddar fondue with a milk chocolate fondue for dessert...mmmm!

Dinner gave way to dancing:

 

...and  some acrobatics that defied capture on film. Hope you all had a lovely day, too!

Valentine inspiration

 

This sunrise inspired this project:

A Valentine for Daddy ... a suncatcher made from tissue papers in all the colors of the dawn sky.

We did something similar to what you see in this tutorial only ours is in the shape of a heart.