a little love

Early last month, I began preparing for The Valentine's Day Card-Making Girls'-Night-In.

It didn't work last year - no one could be there, and admittedly, I started a little too late to find a free night in most ladies' schedules. But this year, it was successful. And so fun!

First, there were cupcakes. They were confetti cupcakes covered in homemade chocolate icing. Linnea tasted and saw that it was good, but then decided that they most certainly needed handmade heart-shaped picks to be complete. True?

True, indeed.


And then there was the trip to the dollar store for conversation heart candies, which found their way onto these sugar cookies:

Here is the point at which I am most grateful for the Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix packages. They're so easy. The cookies don't require refrigeration before they can be rolled out, either = genius.

I had fun choosing the candies for each heart to say something creative, as you might imagine.

Here are two of the ladies that joined me for card-making and consumption of copious amounts of chocolate - note the counter full of goodies.

We enjoyed chocolate milk (thanks, Sally!), chocolate coconut cupcakes (delicious, Jamie!), amazing cream cheese sandwich cookies and jelly-filled heart shaped cookies (many thanks to Jennifer), in addition to the two treats I showed you above.


We also had time between bites to create Valentine's Day cards. This was guise under which we got together, and it was quite an effective ruse for the eating of chocolate and the neglecting of homework and the hours of conversation.

See? Productive. And cute! Look at Jennifer's card for her hubby:

And Jamie's for her husband:

Sally left before we could get a group picture. It was, admittedly, rather late at night by this point.

Still silly and sugary sweet.

Here are the cards that I made for my sister, sisters-in-law, MIL, and my mom:

I love how they turned out! Sally brought some really beautiful paper that she made, and I loved adding that to my cards. I did some hand sewing to add an extra special detail to the lace, too.