Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day I am going to talk about a few things that I really love: decorating, crafting, and teaching!

If you follow my Instagram, you know that I decorate for every holiday! I have a buffet... a pseudo-mantle... to display my holiday decor. 

This is my Valentine's Day display... someday I will get around to posting my displays for each holiday! Most of the items I get are from places like Hobby Lobby, Homegoods, and Target.

There are also items that I make myself because I can't find what I want in the store... which leads me to second love... crafting! See those cupcakes on the fabulous cupcake tier? They are... FAKE! Seriously, they are made with foam and dry wall compound.

 If you want to make them yourself you will need:

1. Tins and Liners: Fill cupcake tins with paper liners.
2. Washers: Put one washer on the bottom of each cupcake liner.
3. Expanding Foam: Fill each cupcake liner with expanding foam about half way. The expanding foam is one time use. I was able to make 3 trays of 12 "cupcakes", for a total of 36. The foam will expand, much like cupcakes do in the oven when baked!
4. Dry: The "cupcakes" should be expanded and tack free after about 20 minutes. The instructions on the can says that the foram can be painted after 12-24 hours, I painted mine the next day.
5. Paint: Paint each "cupcake" in a tan or brown color to mimic vanilla and chocolate cake.
6. Frosting: Mix the dry wall compound with food coloring to make "frosting". I suggest using glass bowls because it washes off very easily. I didn't have brown food coloring, so I used paint to color the compound for chocolate, pink food coloring for the strawberry, and left the compound as is for vanilla (I made sure to purchase compound that was white, as opposed to a grey-ish color so it looked like vanilla). You want the consistency of the "frosting" to be like actual frosting, so add flour if it is too watery. 
7. Piping bag: Fill your piping bag with the "frosting" and pipe onto the cupcakes. If you get it to the consistency of actual frosting, it should stay in the shape you pipe.
8. Decorations: Sprinkle and add decorations onto the wet "frosting" so as it dries it will bond. Be careful with real sprinkles, the color may run if the "frosting" is too wet.

I made my cupcakes last year, and they still look great!

Speaking of making things... to let my students know how much I love teaching them, I made a special valentine for them. I found my inspiration in the Target dollar spot... well technically the $3 spot.

The valentines came like this:

I decided to make my own card to go with the donut erasers!

 

        

If you want to make the same valentines, you can find them in my Teachers Pay Teachers store here. 

So, what do you plan on doing for Valentine's Day? Have you made any crafts? Greg and I are going to go out the day after to take advantage of a 50% off bottle of wine deal, and I don't have school Monday or Tuesday!