Mail Time for Valentine's Day

As a lot of you may know, I don't have much time for crafting these days... As such, I decided I would go easy this Valentine's Day. I bought some little dollar mailboxes from the Target dollar bins and slapped on some vinyl with their names on it. Add a little scrapnfonts.com Valentine's doodlebat to some already cut cards and a "stamp" to go on the envelope, write a little message, address the little envelope and done!

Easy Altered Foil Tins for Valentine's Day

 Hi all. Just a quick post to show you a quick project! I keep forgetting that I have these holiday tins until I put away my Christmas decorations and then I get mad at myself for not taking advantage of the ease with which I can give goodies away. Needless to say, I decided that I didn't care if it wasn't Christmas time anymore and I'm not making some kind of bread to put in here. I'm usin' 'em!

 It was really very simple. Just a little glue stick and stamp action on the top, add a little ribbon, and we're ready to roll!

 Clawson's saying, "I LOVE those!" And I'm saying, "They're not for you, buddy..."

These are brownies made from a cake mix that have caramel and chocolate chips in them. Quite tasty if you ask me. You can find the recipe here.

Monster of a Valentine

Hey there, Valentiner's! Three days before Valentine's Day and I'm already posting for it! :) Sure beats last year. I saw a tissue box on Pinterest (thanks Carly) that they made into a monster and thought it was so cute! I've made a box cut file and some teeth in case anyone wants to give it a go.

(Please note that the box has been crushed and reformed, so it does not look pristine - keep it away from 3-year-old's until Valentine's Day.)

You can just cut out circles any size you want and glue googly eyes to it. It might be fun to have your kids decorate their own monsters with all your old/various crafty items around the house...this one is just a plain, basic one, but you should go wild!

Cut File - Monster Box with teeth. svg

Alligator Valentines (snap)! (Free SVG)

Happy Valentine's Day! (in 30 minutes or so...) Yes, it's almost midnight on Sunday and I'm just finishing up with Valentine's for the kiddos. I really can't claim much of anything that I did this time around, but I can share the love! I first got the idea for alligator valentine's from my sweet MIL who makes up big old themes when she gives gifts (and believe me, she goes ALL out!). Well, when she gave the kids some Valentine's, I fell in love with her theme and decided to go with it. I decided I was going to make boxes that looked like alligators, but was daunted by the task of coming up with an idea entirely by myself with only two days to speak of. So, I searched the net...and this is what I found!

Adorable! Cindy at Skip to My Lou
had a pdf of these little cuties and a great tutorial on them...go check her out! I fell in love with her site. So many fun ideas!

Well, I couldn't print the pdf and cut by hand these cute little guys (I mean, come on, use scissors?), so I (with the permission of one very kind Cindy at Skip to my Lou) created a .svg that I could cut with my handy dandy cricut. And guess what?! Cindy shares freebies too and said yee-ha to my request to share this file with you! Okay, she really didn't say yee-ha. I don't think she's from Texas.

I also got together my son's Valentine's to give to his class because I slept on the couch all day instead of doing it with him. I just made a cute little purse and stuck some candies and mazes in baggies. He'll be putting names on labels tomorrow morning. :)

If you're a slacker like me, here's a file! Or use it next year...if you don't want to be part of the last-minute loser club.

Free SVG

Alligator Valentine - .svg

Download and head on over to Skip to my Lou to see how to put it together (and to browse for hours on end...)

Design Challenge Box - Finally!

Well, here are the boxes I made for the "What kind of box is this?" challenge. I specifically designed it to hold homemade donuts! They fit perfectly in a box that is as big as a 12 x 12 will make it. I made the donuts first, so I didn't have enough time to make the box up as cute as I wanted to. (The donuts took a while!) You can find the recipe on Erincooks.com. They were incredibly good when they were warm, and still very good the next day.

I also wanted to do some more with this box for Valentine's Day. I thought it would be fun to do my Valentine's this year for my kids in my own boxes (especially since they don't really like the box of chocolates that come in a heart). Last year, I didn't have time to make cards for my family, so I just had candies for them instead. After my oldest gave me a Valentine card he had made for me, he asked me where his card was. I felt AWFUL! I won't make that mistake again. So, here are the boxes and cards I made up. Eventually I'll make it to the store to get the candy I want to put inside.

The sweet little animals I used are from scrapnfonts.com in a doodlebat font called DB Animal Occasion. The font is called 2 Peas Airplanes.

Want some more ideas? Go visit these talented ladies' blogs and see what they did with the box!!

http://stampin-n-more.blogspot.com/2010/02/weddings-always-make-me-cry.html

http://paperpastime.com/

http://dawnday.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentine-gift-box-all-things-crafty.html

http://busybbuzz.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentine-boxes.html

Thanks for participating!!

If you make any of the boxes on my site that you want to share with others, please email me and I'll put a link on the post. We'd all LOVE to see what you did!

Cut File Freebie - Week #10

My hubby and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary last Tuesday. It's gone so fast! I decided this year I would try to add a little spice (literally...cuz what marriage doesn't need a little of that once in a while?) since he likes cinnamon candies. I needed a new box cut (of course) to put it in and ended up making a playing card box. I had the idea to make a card that looked like the 8 of hearts, but then just didn't have the time. So I used a card I made about two years ago right after I got my SYI cart. Very simple, but it did the trick!

I sized the svg for the playing card box at 7" wide. I believe this will hold regular size cards. I didn't try it yet, but that size should work. I'm sure there's loads of other things you could use it on too! The fonts I used on this project were 2 peas audition (hot), 2 peas beach balls (4), and 2 peas airplane (u).

Playing Card Box - svg

Decadent Chocolate Cheesecake

I made this for a girls' night out. The night it was made it kind of tasted like chocolate mousse. The next day like a cheesecake - I preferred it the next day...but others might disagree. Either way it was goodness!

1 1/2 cups chocolate wafer crumbs (can use oreos with frosting scraped out)
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/4 pounds cream cheese, softened at room temperature
3/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
4 ounces melted semisweet chocolate, cooled slightly
Fresh strawberries, for garnish
Whipped cream, for garnish
Fresh mint sprigs, for garnish
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (if using a silver springform pan, or 325 degrees F if using a dark nonstick springform pan).

Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9-inch spring-form pan. In a mixing bowl, combine the chocolate wafer crumbs, 3 tablespoons of the sugar, and the butter and mix well. Press onto the bottom of springform pan and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, combine cream cheese, remaining sugar, and vanilla extract and beat until light and creamy. Add the flour to the cream cheese mixture and beat until smooth. Add the melted chocolate and sour cream and mix well. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition until just blended. Pour the batter into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour, until the center is almost set. Allow cake to cool in cooling oven for one hour to prevent cracking. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before serving. Preferably overnight!  Cheesecake may be made up to 2 days in advance before serving and will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.

Serve the cheesecake garnished with fresh strawberries, whipped cream and mint sprigs. (Great the next day with nothing!)

Valentine's Day Love in Cute Packages

Here's my Valentine goodies I sent to my mom, dad, and sister in the Philippines. Just an altered chocolate bar and some Hershey Kiss Roses. I had fun doing it!

All I did for the altered candy bars was put a band of cute paper around it, some ribbone, a cut out heart from my wonderful cricut, and a stamped tag with a flower and little rhinestone. I also just used my white pen to make little dots for accents.

For the Hershey Kiss roses, I used double sided tape to stick two kisses together. Then I took two squares of pink or red or white tissue paper (I doubled it up so that you couldn't see through and also so that the kisses wouldn't poke through the top) and wrapped it around the kisses. I wrapped a (man, what do you call those!) wire, furry stick around the kisses and then used floral tape to cover it and get them to stick together.