2017 Valentine's Recap

I hope you've been having a good week!
Sometimes holidays, for moms, can help our week or hurt are week.

No worries if your Valentine's didn't turn out the way you liked this year,
Valentine's comes around again every year.

NieNie posted this song on her blog this week.

I LOVE, LOVE it. It totally made my Valentine week.
I replayed it, and hummed, and sung to it all week.
I love the lyrics, the music, the married singers, etc.

Chris and I had an adult ward Valentine's Dinner last weekend.
Nothing too exciting, but fun to dress up and have a planned date.

Sadie made these cute Valentine's this year.
We all loved how they turned out.
Here is the link if you want to pin the idea to use for next year.
There is a free printable included on the link.

Brandon used window cling Valentines
I got at the store last year on clearance.
Luckily, he was willing to use them for his Kindergarten class.

Tate wanted to do a maze for his Valentine's this year.
He wanted the maze to be really hard. It was.
I'm not even sure he could solve it.
We googled heart mazes online, cut and pasted it onto a document,
and I added the aMAZEing part to it and we printed them out on white cardstock.
Tate folded them in half and attached a pixie straw to it for the candy part.
I told him he should hand out pencils, instead of candy, to do the maze.
He said, " Nah,  somebody else will hand out pencils for their valentine's so I don't need to."
Good point, Tate.

My Valentine, Chris, likes cookies, so I tried to up my cookie baking abilities for Chris this week.
I tried this recipe from browneyedbaker.com
As I was linking you to this recipe I discovered Michelle from browneyedbaker.com has already improved upon this recipe even more with this recipe.
So, now I need to try her updated version. So many cookies to bake, so little time.

The real secret to her cookies was not using all-purpose flour and using cake and bread flours instead.
I'm learning that there is a difference with flours, and it can effect our baking.
I refrigerated my dough for about an hour. I didn't need to do it for 24 hours.
I used milk chocolate and semi-sweet chips in my recipe.

Our Tuesday, Valentine night was little hectic with some meetings both Chris and I had to attend to.
(We had gone out to the ward Valentine earlier in the week, and did lunch that day together).

In the evening, I did a dinner with just the kids.
We did Cupid's Crazy Cafe from an old ward friend.
It was a huge hit and not all that hard.
I just assigned a spaghetti dinner, salad, drink, bread, dessert (the above cookies) and jello
a different name and number from the photo/list below. One of the items was silverware.
The kids had no idea what I had made, and I fed them in a separate room from the kitchen.
They had to choose 2 things first.
My kids could end up with a salad and a cookie, but no fork to eat it with.
Or spaghetti with nothing to eat it with, or just jello and a drink, etc.
All my kids loved it and giggled their way through the whole meal.
Even my teens loved it, which is saying something!
This is a new tradition for sure, they are all requesting it for April Fool's.
We can change it up, by the food we serve.