Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's Day and I have a love/hate relationship.  You're probably wondering, "Why the hate on a day that's about love?".  Well, I'm not loving the commerical side that pressures men into being nice and spending too much money once a year, if that's all that they do for their wives.  However, as a day to say I love you and for kids to get creative and hand out valentine's, I love it.

This being June's first Valentine's Day, I was excited to plan out what we (or I) would make for all of her little friends.  I wanted something with a vintage feel.  I love the valentine cards that remind me of the ones my grandmas would give me when I was little.  I did a little searching and found this one, which I printed on cardstock.

Then I thought it would be nice to add a little treat along with the card.  Smarties have holiday-themed colours at different times of the year, so I picked up some pink and red ones.  I air-popped about 1.5 to 2 cups of popcorn kernels, which made around 10 cups of popcorn.  I then melted some belgian white chocolate in a double boiler and poured it over the popcorn.  I used approximately 2 cups of white chocolate, but this could definitely changed based on how sweet you like it.  Make sure if you go to a bulk food store, you buy good white chocolate, not just white melting wafers.  Melting wafers tend to taste fake and plastic-y.  I then mixed in the smarties and spread everything out on parchment-lined baking sheets.

I think next time I would spread out the chocolate popcorn and then sprinkle the smarties on top.  After stirring, the smarties tended to get clumped together.  Leave it to dry overnight.  I used a heart stamp to stamp some small brown paper bags.


I then hole punched the top, added the valentine and tied it with red and white bakers twine.  Since most of June's friends are in the 18-month and under crowd, this was mainly enjoyed by their parents.


And, just because I'm a mom, here is our attempt at getting a valentine photo for the grandparents as we headed out for supper and a Jets game.