Fancy Soda Pop: 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.