The post I did on DIY marshmallow flowers went over so well that I decided to let the kids play around this weekend with some different approaches to the marshmallow flower. I am a little bit of a control freak when it comes to the kids in the kitchen. They like to look with their hands, sling batter all around, cough all over stuff (you are never going to eat anything produced in my kitchen again, are you? #moreforme). Breathe. Honestly though, this is something they can do with limited supervision. It’s just like a craft project using glue. My two were SO proud of themselves and the flowers they made.  They even came up with some new things to try!

I scored some Jett-Puffed pink heart marshmallows and some more of their regular strawberry marshmallows. We played with new combinations, new presentation and even did a few with colored sugar. I think the flower pot is a fun way to display these for a party. I’d love them in a long, skinny trough planter down the center of a party table as well. What a fun centerpiece! Just insert a piece of foam in your pot and arrange your marshmallow flowers. This would also be cute as shown a gift with your message written on a plant marker. OK, I’ll stop.

Here’s our star, the traditional version marshmallow flower. I decided to pink the leaves to add a little whimsy.

And here’s the same flower topped with a marshmallow heart.

You just draw a circle with the cookie icing to leave a space in the center, dip it in the nonpareils, and then insert the stick all the way through the top of the marshmallow flower and slightly into the heart marshmallow on top. Cute, no? My six-year-old came up with this next version.

It actually looks really cute with a single heart or with two, three or four heart marshmallows to a stick. It’s especially cute to use these for variety if you are doing an arrangement in a pot. Next, we played with some colored sugar, drawing a heart with the cookie icing and then dipping the marshmallow into the sugar. These are a cute and easy as individually-wrapped add-ons to a gift or classroom exchange card.

Finally, and since it was Super Bowl Sunday, (any excuse to make sweets, right?) I made a recipe of brownies. I did mine in a 9×13 glass dish because I wanted more surface area to play with using the various cookie cutter shapes in case there was a learning curve. I bought a pack of cute plastic Valentine’s cookie cutters from the Target Dollar Bins. ♥

I had great luck cutting perfect little heart-shaped brownies. I think I’ll double my recipe to make them thicker and give our teachers each a big fat stack of these–probably with a note about “brownie points,” an idea I got from Lauren McKinsey, who has some super cute printables to that effect. Genius!

How cute did they turn out with the little arrow pick? Right through the heart! Those are actually the tulip appetizer picks from Pick On Us. I think they look like arrows though and even recommended them in a party plan for an archery-themed birthday! You can get 50 of them for $5. The bad news is I BELIEVE their minimum order is $25, but if you do a lot of entertaining, they have enough varieties of adorable appetizer picks, that you can stock up with cute, colorful and even themed food picks to last you for a while. I’m still working on using the ones I bought when hosting Lauren’s Boy Meets World Sip and See. It’s a really simple way to add to your food presentation, I think.

That’s all I have for now. I hope you all give these a try. Super fun and totally, TOTALLY easy. Don’t forget to check out my free Valentine’s printables for classroom exchanges! Love is in the air!