St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Garland

When it comes to holidays, I've always had the best intentions of decorating. I mean, I DO go all-out at Christmastime, but other than that I've been a pretty pitiful decorator. I'm not sure why...maybe it's a lack of time? Or maybe it's just too much work to scoot the kid-induced clutter out of the way to stick some cutesy holiday what-nots in its place.

So this is why it's somewhat amazing that it's only March and I've already decorated for 2 holidays this year. Granted, it's just my mantel so far, but it's a start, right? My Valentine's heart garland was inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. I came up with this St. Patrick's Day shamrock garland because I so enjoyed having something there the whole month of February. Once the hearts came down, I just HAD to have something to go up in their place.



Plus, I'm over half Irish, so of course this is a holiday I have to celebrate!

I started by tracing a shamrock-shaped cookie cutter onto a piece of paper. Then I enlarged it by extending the outline free hand. I cut it out and traced it on fabric. Now, normally I would have used my disappearing fabric marker for this, but it had apparently been "borrowed" by Not Me, so I resorted to a ball-point pen.



I made a sandwich of my traced shamrock, a square of cotton batting, and another matching piece of fabric, right sides out.



Then I pinned them together and stitched about 1/4" inside my lines. If the shape wasn't so convoluted, I would have stitched ON the lines and then cut it out 1/4" outside the lines, but in this case I think it would have messed up the shamrock shape.






My stitching lines aren't perfect, but since they have a sort of scrappy look anyway with the unfinished edges, that's okay.



I thought they needed something else, so I stitched a button to the center of each shamrock. I then attached them to a piece of 1/4" green ribbon using a tiny dab of hot glue. I think they turned out pretty cute!



Now I just need some decor for the top of my mantel...and I really should figure out just WHAT the boys did with the piece of wood they broke off that scroll-y piece on the front of the fireplace!

My Sweet Valentines

I have not 1, but 8 Valentines to spoil on Valentine's Day! Some years I get more creative with their treats than others...namely the years I'm NOT pregnant, haha! This year I made my sweeties sugar cookies. I was trying to make them look like conversation hearts.

This was my first time to try royal icing on cookies. I've made it before, but only to use as cement for gingerbread houses at Christmas. I colored it with Wilton gel colors. I think they turned out pretty cute, although the icing dried funny on some of them. They look wet around the edges, but they're not. Hmmmm.....



My lettering skills need some practice!




I also followed our tradition of giving everyone a box of actual conversation hearts. Candy always goes over well around here! It's okay to eat cookies and candy for breakfast if it's a holiday, right?? (We did follow up with scrambled eggs about an hour later!)


A little darling (with a bad case of bed head!) inspects her candy.



Mmmmm.....yummy!



Joseph enjoying a cookie.



Jordan

Just in case this helps someone else...

I cut out my cookie dough with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, but they spread out just enough to look kind of weird and misshapen in the oven. I just re-cut them out with the cookie cutter while they were still warm, and voila!--perfect heart shapes again! Now, those of you who bake a lot have probably already figured that out, but it was new to me, so I'm sharing. :) I had lots of eager tasters waiting around to eat the edges that were cut off, so nothing was wasted. (As if cookies could EVER go to waste in a house with 7 kiddos!)



The cookies were enjoyed by all. And I got a sweet card AND a box of chocolates from my honey...Yum!!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's our little sweetie all decked out for Valentine's Day!















I learned two important lessons:

1. Don't try to make a whole outfit the day before it's meant to be worn, especially if you are a very novice sewer and are trying things like applique for the first time! Even after finding out I needed a special needle for knits, I couldn't get it to work out exactly right.

2. Make sure at least one of your daughter's pairs of white tights are clean before the morning you actually intend to put them on her...the pink ones don't exactly work here. Good thing she's so cute, though!

The J-boys had a fun Valentine's Day as well, which basically means they had more sugar than they needed and didn't get in too much trouble for being wild because of it. They enjoyed giving the felt hearts they had made to several ladies at our church, and we went out to lunch with friends and had Thai food, which is a big favorite of the boys. I'd say they had a good day...hopefully they will be ready to get back to their school books tomorrow!