For My Significant Otter!

Good morning! We hope everyone had a fantastic weekend, sharing it with your loved ones, or just loving yourself, which is always necessary too! As promised, I have some more Valentine's Day projects to share, although it's a few days late. So, today's project is the card I made for my otter half:

This card has features two of my favorite things: otters and puns! (If you ever find yourself needing to smile, I highly recommend looking up pictures of otters. They are just so stinking cute!!) So, one of the things I tend to do is cuddle real close and hold hands. It's one of the things otters do so they don't float away from each other. We joke around, saying we have to hold hands so we don't float away. Or fall off the couch. This is the inside of the card:

I absolutely love puns! I would use them all the time if I could. When I use them, he usually chuckles and smiles. (Or he just feels bad because I'm so corn-y) Either way, there's usually a smile on both of our faces, so it's all good! I didn't want to go overly Valentine-y with the card, since he's not at all into the holidays (any of them), but I still wanted to show him how I feel! I guess that's all the gushiness... :)
Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Now it's time to get ready to enjoy the absolutely beautiful February weather we're having. Sorry to all of our New England friends and family! You can always come visit!! Have a wonderful day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Good Saturday morning! I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend with their loved ones. Unfortunately, my sweetie has to work today and is having quite the difficult time waking up this morning. Or maybe that's fortunate because then I can finish up some things without being distracted by him! (It's always a welcome distraction, though.) I have a few Valentine's Day projects and tid=bits to share, though. You know, in the spirit of the holiday. Although, according to our mom, every day should be Valentine's Day- you shouldn't need a special day to tell someone you love them! Anyway, this is how we started this morning:

After waking up at 6:15 this morning because of a rogue alarm that was set for the school week, I started attempting to write today's post. One thing led to another and I decided I wanted to make something sweet for my sweetie. Since it was a spur of the moment decision, I went with a coffee cake crumb muffin (and it sort of works for Cupcake Saturday, huh?!) They made the apartment smell delish! And he got a good chuckle out of it, which definitely made it worth it!
I have a few more ideas for the rest of the day, and a few more cards to work on. The rest of the projects will be posted in the coming days. So much for posting more consistently... I promise I'll try a little harder with getting the projects posted, especially because I've been working on some cute new designs, including an attempt at some lucky St. Patrick's Day projects!

Whoo Loves You?!

Happy Sunday!! We hope you are all having a fantastic weekend so far! After days of waiting for the rain, it has finally come. We are supposed to have heavy rain for the next three days. Luckily we don't live in the mountains... These days are perfect for catching up on crafting (and cleaning, unfortunately). Anyway, we have one more Valentine's Day gifts to share with you today. This is the gift I put together for Boy this year. I didn't want to ruin the surprise, so hopefully he doesn't look here today... Unfortunately, my pictures aren't very good today. Sorry!

Owls are his favorite animals, so I went with them as inspiration. It's also easy to come up with a silly pun to go along with. The bag and matching card have the two owls sitting on a branch with little matching ribbon embellishments. And of course, I added googly eyes!

The card is an easel card. Once it's open, the top rests on some 3D hearts. The final touch is a bag topper for the sweet snack:

I made some s'more pretzels (hence another pun!). It also features the two little owls!
Hopefully he'll enjoy this gift. And if he doesn't care for the gift set (because he's a boy...) hopefully he'll like the gifts inside!
We  are entering this gift set into FCCB's "I Heart You" Challenge
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a great day!

You're Tops!

Woohoo! It's finally Friday! We hope everyone has had a wonderful week. Or, at least through the latest storm back East. Hopefully everyone will be shoveled out in time for their big plans with loved ones tonight. Or, watching rom-coms with some pizza and drinks. Nothing wrong with that either.
Anyway, today's project is a set of classroom Valentines for tomorrow:

How cute are these little suckers?! (pun intended!) These little lollipop holders have a few layers to them:

Each holder has a layered heart and and book. The books are complete with googly eyes (of course) and a teacher-related pun. The best thing about these?! They used up scraps and only two new pieces of paper! They are a great way to use up all our small scraps.
We were going to post these for yesterday, but decided it would be better to do it today. There are quite a few kiddos in Robyn's class who frequent our blog. We didn't want to ruin it for them... :) We already have so many more ideas for these! Sometimes being so creative is such an inconvenience.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day with all your loved ones!

Be My Valentine

Happy Thursday!! We hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far. We hope all of your Valentine's plans are all set, but last minute is always good, too! (I mean, it's not like it doesn't happen every year...) So, in honor of all those last-minuters, here is a Valentine's Day card we quickly threw together:

This card turned out to be a lot more elegant than  originally planned. We added some extra lace and rhinestones for some extra special touches. To finish it off, we popped out the sentiment on front. This whole card was whipped together in less than 30 minutes, including design time, but it looks like it took much longer (in our opinion!)
Thanks for stopping by! Come back tomorrow for our cutest Valentine idea of the year (granted, there hasn't been much 'competition'...)

Hey Valentine...

Happy Wednesday! We hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. We've been staying busy, trying to catch up with our personal crafting. The latest project we completed was a set of Valentine cards for our sister.

These cuties were pretty quick to whip up. When we first started designing them, this wasn't even near the original idea. After talking to her, we decided to go with the silly animal puns. These little critters and the puns are always a good match for each other. And to top it off, they all have googly eyes! The finishing touches on the cards are the little gemstones for the ellipses. They're a little "little kiddish", but what valentine isn't?!
Thanks for stopping by! Come back tomorrow for another Valentine's Day project!

One More Valentine's Day Project!

Good morning! We hope everyone had a wonderful (Single's Awareness) day yesterday. For being two single ladies, ours wasn't too bad. We had a few kids ask us if we'd be their Valentine, (but we're pretty sure it was because they felt bad for us!) We spent the evening watching the hot guys on The Vampire Diaries, some wine, and a pizza. Can't get much better than that! And to top it off, it's the start of another long weekend, with temperatures in the mid-50's! (and a little bit of rain, of course).
Today's project is our last Valentine's Day project for this year. It is a quick hot chocolate gift set. We wanted to make something that would go with our coffee syrup kit, but was appropriate for a child. We figured the next best warm drink to coffee was hot chocolate! We added four little packages of hot chocolate mix, figuring these looked a little nicer than the packages from the box, some little chocolates, and some mini marshmallows, but those are hiding. (Who knew you can get a whole container of just hot chocolate marshmallows?! We'll have to see what kind of recipes we can make with them!!)

This was our first attempt at actually painting on a coffee mug. The other times we've decorate mugs, we've done so with vinyl and Sharpies. We wrote out the name first and then went over it with an acrylic paint. (Recommendation- have your design drawn out first, in case you spell something wrong, or don't like the look of it.) We've seen the idea on Pinterest before, which is where we got the Sharpie idea. Unfortunately, the marker ones washed off only after a few handwashings. Here's to hoping this lasts longer!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Join us tomorrow for another Cupcake Saturday!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Or as we like to call it, "Singles Awareness Day." It's not that we are against it or anything, but shouldn't love be shown every day instead of just one day?
Today's post is the gift we sent to our parents. It's a movie gift basket, with all kinds of goodies inside.
(The best part is the Nicholas Sparks four movie collection. They don't get much more romantic than his stories!)

The inside of the card has a poem using the names of the different snacks we put into it. It sounds corny, but that's okay!

Thanks for stopping by!

L-O-V-E

Today's project is a cute little Valentine's Day card. I love the different color combination used, instead of just pinks and reds. The blue makes it stand out a little, and isn't quite as girly as other Valentines cards.

The different techniques and textures used on this card were a lot of fun too, except for poking all those holes for the stitching. The only thing I would change is to add something to the empty white space, but I don't know what I would add to it. Maybe a photo. This would make a really cute scrapbook page as well.

I hope everyone has their gifts for tomorrow. Nothing like waiting till that last minute!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

Welcome to another Cupcake Saturday! We hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend! In honor of the upcoming holiday next week, we have decided to try something a little different look:

These are pink velvet cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting, and topped with a small chocolate heart. The cupcake is sweet enough to eat by itself, which is why there is only a little bit of frosting on top. We decided to bake them in a wine glass, because what is more romantic than sharing a glass with a special someone?! We were worried that the glasses might crack, but they held up in the oven (thankfully). Our glasses are pretty big- much bigger than normal glasses, I think- so it's probably best to share this with a loved one! Or you can eat it all by yourself. We don't judge!
Thanks for stopping by!! Have a great day!

Happy February!

Good Friday morning! We hope everyone has had a great week. It's crazy that it's already February. It definitely hasn't felt like February. Or winter, none the less. This weekend is supposed to be 55 degrees and sun. Not too shabby! It should be a good weekend! So, today's project is a super-simple (and quick) Valentine's Day card

It may not be a very intricate card, but it has a simple elegance to it (in our opinion). It is a little hard to tell, but the white background and heart have been embossed in a damask pattern. We spoiled ourselves and got a new toy that makes it to much easier to emboss, instead of doing it manually. It's so much fun!! We wanted that to be the focal point of the card. The ribbon was added to give it another dimension. The last touch was the two little pins through the bow. These were supposed to be used for another project, but we thought it was the perfect finish to the card.
Thanks for stopping by!

Hugs & Kisses

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a great week so far, and thank goodness it's already Thursday. The last few days have been going by kind of slow here. Maybe it's the dreary weather we've been having. It's been a few days since we've posted, but we've been coming home and napping. It's an exciting life we live.

When I started working on this, it wasn't supposed to be a card. It didn't come out quite like it was planned. I really wanted to use the saying on a wall hanging, but unfortunately, it wasn't working out. I found this cut with a little couple and thought it was a perfect fit for the quote. It's not perfect, but it's still kind of cute!
Thanks for stopping by this morning! Have a great day.

Bamboozled!

Good Thursday evening! We hope everyone has had a wonderful week so far. Tomorrow is finally Friday, and it happens to be a half-day for most of the schools around here. ALthough we can't complain because it has been a short week.
Anyway, the idea for today's project came to mind yesterday, and it was completed today. Some of our favorite projects use fun puns, and there are plenty of them come Valentine's Day. One of the puns we found was the basis of today's layout:

How cute is that saying- "bamboozled by love"?! This is a simple 12x12 layout we created, and it includes two photo mats- one 4x6" and one 4x4". And our favorite part of the layout? The two little panda bears:

So the color choices were a little hard to work with when it came to the bears beause we wanted to work with the colors in the fun photo mats and not add new ones. We decided to go with a light pink 'boy' and a darker pink 'girl', and the little bows add a nice touch to each one. We added some little gems to the heart to accent it a bit.

This picture shows the little bamboo border we added to the larger photo mat. You can't have a panda-themed page without including some bamboo- and we almost forgot to include it! And the little strips on the top and bottom were cut out with a new toy we got last weekend. It is a paper cutter that cuts fun borders. This one is like a torn edge.
How cute is this layout?! Now we just need to find someone to use it for...It doesn't help that we finished putting this together and writing the post for it while watching tonight's Glee. Those darn high school crushes. Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

For a Sweetie

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. It's been kind of drab and dreary here for the last few days (but it hasn't rained. Or snowed.) But at least the week is going by rather quickly, seeing as it's already Wednesday.
We have two projects for today. They are two gift bags we quickly threw together for the holiday:

These two bags are based off the same design, but we decided to make one a 'girly' bag and one a that would fit a boy a little better. We used pink, red, and white paper-typical Valentine's Day colors- for the first bag. For the second bag, we figured a boy would probably not be too happy getting a pink bag, so we went with a red, teal, and white bag. We also added some gray, to make it look a bit more masculine. The colors are far from ordinary, but we think they work quite well. We also used matching ribbon to attach the tags, and the sparkly red pops up again!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

Hey Hunny!

Good morning! We hope everyone has a wonderful long weekend, and are now looking forward to the shortened work week. Today's project is another Valentine's Day project, which would be perfect for a sweetie at any age!

This shaped card features little ol' Pooh Bear! He's just so cute and cuddly! And of course, we had to add a little honey bee. The two images have been layered, so they pop out of the card. It's a little hard to tell, but the two white pieces have been embossed, as well. It's such an easy way to add another dimension to a paper craft. The inside of the card is below:

How well does that go with the card?! (I felt so clever when I realized it would be a perfect saying for a Pooh card) Actually, it would have worked better if I wrote it how I planned. It was supposed to say "Will you bee my hunny?" Oh well. And 'hunny' is not spelled wrong, per se. It is how Pooh Bear spells it. (For the longest time, I thought that was the correct way to spell it...)
Well, that's all for today. Thank you for stopping by and hope everyone has a great day!

A Conversation Starter

Happy Monday! We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We have been keeping busy crafting and completing some orders, so we have stayed out of trouble. We are definitely going to enjoy our day off today- don't know how, but we will!
A few weeks ago, our sister asked us to make her a Valentine's day banner. She is a big fan of the candy hearts and asked us to make her a banner with them. This is what we came up with:

OK, so maybe our Christmas decorations will come down today...Anyway, as you can see, each piece has been designed to look like a candy heart. One of the things that I like the most is that it's not a 'typical' Valentine's Day banner, in the fact that it's not pink or red, but it is still in the holiday spirit. The hardest part was deciding what to write on the hearts. (There are a lot of new sayings that probably just wouldn't look very good on a banner.) We wanted to add some 'pizazz' to the pieces, so we made the sayings pop out, and added a (very light) white stitching pattern around the edges:

We decided to tie the hearts together with the sparkly ribbon, since she is a big fan of sparkle. We knew it had to be purchased when we were at the store! How awesome is it?? I'm so excited that there is extra ribbon left over :)
Thanks for stopping by! 

Valentine's Day Wreath

Every holiday needs a wreath, right? We've made some winter, Christmas, and sports wreaths, so why not a Valentine's Day wreath?! The heart shaped wreath form was perfect for this wreath.

I love how the tulle ends up looking a little more like a circle, but still keeps the heart shape in the middle. We used about half of 3- 25 yard rolls of red, white, and pink.

Here's a close up of the die-cut we pinned to the middle of the wreath.

Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Saturday!

Yay! It's finally Saturday! We hope everyone has had a wonderful week. It's been pretty chilly and foggy here all week, but it isn't snow, so it's OK. (Although we still hope for those snow days.) We are definitely looking forward to this three-day weekend. So, since it is (still) Saturday, we have a new cupcake to share with you. This is Valentine's Day-inspired cupcake, with some strawberries and lots of chocolate, and a nice surprise. You'd be sure to get on anyone's good side with these.

 

There is so much chocolate in these little guys. They are a chocolate cake, with a dark chocolate frosting, and a chocolate-covered strawberry on top! The surprise is in the wine we used. I don't know if anyone has tried this, but it is called 'Chocovine', which is chocolate wine. It's like a grown-up chocolate milk. We used some in the batter and the frosting. And another surprise is found inside the cupcake:

 

They are filled with a strawberries and cream mixture. It is a lightly sweetened whipped cream, with strawberries folded in.

How delicious do these cupcakes look?? They can get the attention of that special someone, or they are can just cause a 'death by chocolate'.
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful (long) weekend!!

A Small Fortune

No, not what Uncle Pete lost on the game today...

After watching the Seahawks lose a really close, exciting game this morning, we made this cute little Valentine's Day project to share with you. It feels a little early to be thinking Valentine's Day,especially for two people who celebrate Singles Awareness Day, but that's okay!

These paper fortune cookies start out as a 3" circle, folded into the cookie shape. (There are a bunch of tutorials online. I didn't take step-by-step pictures to show you, sorry!) Inside of each cookie is a slip of paper with a message on it. The great thing about these is that you can make them with fortunes or coupon-like messages or put anything you'd like on them! They're very personalize-able. I think one really cute thing to do would be to make 14 of them and have 14 days of Valentine's surprises!

Thanks for stopping by!

Spreading the Love

Today's post is about a project we made for a very special person! This is part of a Valentine's Day gift (and this tomorrow we get to continue with the rest of the year. For two girls who celebrate "Single's Awareness Day, we sure have done a lot of Valentines's Day projects!) Our sister (ok, technically sister-in-law, but could have been a long-lost sister) has recently started crafting along with us. We figured that everyone enjoys getting crafting gifts, so we made it for her.

So, here is the front of the box. It's nice and small so it will fit nicely on a desk. Hopefully it will give her inspiration for future projects! There is a sock monkey on the front (she's a fan!). It matches the card that goes along with the gift (Monday's project). The rose in the corner is handmade. Who doesn't like getting flowers for Valentine's Day?! The picture is a little blurry, but the pink accents have sparkle in them. There are also jewel accents on the frame.

 This is a picture of the inside of the box. We included a little bit of everything in here. There are buttons, ribbon, and stickers. We included some cards and envelopes, too.

I'm really hoping that the gift has gotten to her already, or else I have just given everything away!! Thanks for looking and have a great day!