♥ Valentines Day 2011♥

On Tuesday we celebrated the Feast of St Valentine in our home. This is a family event mostly and we tried to have some fun food and activities.
As you can see our pockets in our 'family heart' is stuffed, I took this photo early in the day and by the end of the day it was even more full of....love!

I have wanted to make these for ages, ( I had first seen it on Jessica's blog a couple of years ago) but until recently Oreo cookies were not widely available in Australia, and I really wasn't sure what they were.
Mostly on our feast days and special events we tend to try and give everyone a special activity to do. Rogan was so keen to do the dipping of the chocolate on the cookies and draw the hearts on with red gel icing. It really was a fun activity for him!

As part of our decorating I had made a ribbon banner with sculpy love hearts.
I don't think it photograped as well as it could have. It really looks very lovely and spans the fire place.
 I worked on it over a few nights while spending time with the older children.
I actually think if used with different colours it could be used for birthdays or other celebrations too.

Thankfully Stephen and some of the older children kept an eye on them in the oven due to the fact I went to bed with Arwen and, um...well...I didn't get up again until morning.

Rogan made some place mats for our dinner table. Due to the fact that on Valentines Day we had no coloured paper except white we varied our plans and printed small heart images out form the computer and glued them on. Rogan then decorated around each heart image.
Great job Rogan, thank you.

My crochet and knitted heart banner that I was so keen to make was never actually made. I was distracted with other things, partly two series of books I have read over the last couple of weeks.
So when we visited Kendra's family on the weekend and I saw her beautiful banner over the arch way I knew that it was just the thing for us too.
although Kendra is a whizz on the computer and hers looks so professional I have no idea how to do what she does, so it is back to hand printing and decorating for the children.
Eden has a special ability to create beautifully decorated items and I love how she did the banner too.

Moran and Vellvin made valentine hearts for everyone to fill in for others, again no coloured paper so lots of colouring with textas and crayons. Thank you too girls

Of course Valentines day is not complete without books and I have always loved Tasha Tudor's pictures in these books especially.

Our bookcase display was put together by Autumn and me.
The Valentine tree was once again a big focal point in decorations, again with coloured in paper and some more ribbon.
Don't you love what you can do with ribbon?

What is this you may ask? Well as we had no St Valentine figure Autumn was very keen to pursue her idea of St Valentine being beheaded. So she looked around and came back with a doll's body I am part way through making along with a head for another project, combine that with a wooden chopping block some red wool and an axe from a knight and you have the Martyrdom of St Valentine.
Grisly but oh, so effective I think!

Corbyn and Myffwyn with their colouring pictures Charlotte's one of course and another one I found on the web (can't find the link now)

 

Moran and Rogan with their copies of the colouring pictures.
The younger children did this while we were finishing dinner preparations.
To keep in mind for next year Jessica has prepared two work sheets I will add to our collection.

St Valentine Wordsearch and St Valentine Crossword Puzzle

Thank you Jessica!

Autumn made a beautiful chocolate heart shape cake with pink peppermint icing and some heart chocolate sprinkles as well. It  was quite delectable!

Our main meal was simply heart shapes mini pizza's. Made form English muffins cut into heart shapes, BBQ sauce ham, black olives, tomato and cheese. Simple and quick.

Trying to keep the theme pink, red and white. We made pink milk added some whipped cream and chopped up strawberries. Another popular choice.

I had been saving these Love note candy's for a few months and almost forgot to put them out. The writing on each one makes them special for the kids, even if some of them aren't quite what they were looking to say. I got a few given to me that said, hug me etc.

Arwen was busy helping with the heart shaped coolie dough...her favourite part of the day.

The last item we made for the day was heart shaped cookies. Saxon made the dough and he and Eden and Arwen cut out the cookies. I added the jelly crystals at the last to give them a bit of colour and to avoid having to ice and decorate them at the end of a long and quite busy day.

I pray you each enjoyed your own celebrations for the day with the special people in your life.
Thank you for sharing in our celebrations by visiting here ♥

Blessings to you and your homes,