Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made two crafts this Valentines.

The first thing I made was the XOXO banner. I used left over burlap from the Christmas stockings I made a few years ago to make the flag part. I (I mean James) cut out a template for me and I used it to make my flags. I then chose a font that I wanted and cut out the center (the black ink part), creating a stencil. Next, I took a paint brush and black acrylic paint and dabbed in the center of the stencil and immediately lifted it off the burlap once I was satisfied. The paint didn't bleed through the burlap as much as I thought it would, but I still placed the burlap onto some newspaper for easy clean up. For the rope, I braided some yarn together and hand stitched it into place.

I thought it turned out super cute.

I love my bunting collection that I have started.
The second project I did was sew together a love note on "notebook paper." I saw the idea on pinterest and thought it was super cute and I THOUGHT it would be super easy. What I thought I was going to be doing was sew straight lines across a piece of felt. What I ended up doing was ripping out a lot of thread. For some reason the bobbin thread thingamajig kept getting all looped up in the back and my peddle was needing more pressure then usual to move and when I pushed down it would FREAK OUT and make a 'putaputa' sound at high speed. I took the bobbin out a few times, re-wrapped it, tightened the little screw the holds it in place (which I think helped) and did my best to continue sewing. I get so frustrated when something so simple ends up being difficult. If you have any insight as to why my sewing machine acts so difficult at times, please HELP!

After I sewed the straight paper lines I hand embroidered the numbers, words, and circles.

Anyways, so I wanted to make the love note for James and I ended up completing it and again, I thought it turned out cute. One side isn't very straight, but whatever, it's homemade. I thought it would be cute to hang onto for years to come and our kids can play with it when they play house or school or something.

For Valentines today, I stuck the love note inside James' school bag as a surprise when he woke up. He liked it!!

Today when I got home from work he gave me a card and two Ghirardelli chocolate bars (one dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt {my new favorite thanks to a co-worker} and the other was dark chocolate with orange in the middle).

I also had for James, something special, that he probably would have never guessed he would have gotten. Do you want to know what it was? Ok. Two chocolate bars. One was dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt and the other was dark chocolate with peppermint. We are obsessed with dark chocolate, and apparently dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt, so much so that we knew we couldn't go wrong getting each other chocolate for Valentine's Day.

OK long enough post.

Happy Valentine's Day!