Pink Peppermint Blogger

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!

I’m a bit on pink and red overload with Valentine’s. I’ve been wanting to create some new artwork. Decided I’d try something that feels sort of light and airy in comparison to all the heavy, saturated color we see this time of year. When I was reminded of these candy airplanes (instructions here) on Pinterest, it went perfectly with a theme I’d been batting around in my head, “Love is in the Air!” I decided I’d create a free printable collection along these lines in which the little candy airplane would make an appearance.

Here’s what I used, in specific, for my airplanes:

• Fruit Stripe Gum (still comes in an old-school pack WITH the white wrapper) and more appealing to kids than cinnamon gum in my opinion
• Red, pink, white or pale blue seamless ponytail holder (so the candy won’t taste all rubber bandy)
• Two cherry lifesavers (my kids would spit the white ones out pronto)
• One roll of Smarties
• Tiny Valentine’s stickers (these shown were 2/$1 at Walgreen’s)

Note: If you or your school is opposed to gum for kids this age, you can use a pack of Pez just as well (I’m thinking that an AirHead or mini Laffy Taffy might also work in the gum’s stead). There’s just no pretty white surface to sticker.

These cutie little airplanes fit perfectly into a 4 x 4 inch zipper bag (check your craft store’s jewelry section).  I’ve provided a sweetie pie printable bag topper which prints two to a page on a 4×6. There’s also a version with six to a letter page included. It’s very hard to tell from my fab photog, but the background is pale blue with clouds! Just trim in half and score down the middle of the red scallops to fold. Adhere with glue dots or double stick tape. I used some of each since my paper stock has an extra bit of body to it.

I also did a sort of girl and boy version of the flat Valentine’s handout cards–one with a heart balloon and another with the little plane skywriting “Love” in the clouds. Each has a place to write the names in.

I thought the balloon version lent itself well to a candy add-on. So using my rotary fabric cutter (or an Xacto knife), I cut a 3/4″ slit just below the red of the balloon tip and inserted this heart-shaped sucker. Cute, no? I trimmed some of the excess wrapper off to make it less bulky. If you like, you can score this card to fold in half, then seal it with a sticker. These also print on 4×6, but I have included a download for printing three on a letter-sized page as well.

Look at that happy little heart balloon/sucker! I secured the stick to the back of the card with a piece of clear tape.

Finally, available for free download are these sweet toppers. You can punch them with a 2 inch paper punch as shown here and use them as cupcake picks.

The same printable file also works well as straw toppers when using a 1 1/2 inch paper punch. Here, I freehand cut the 3/4″ slits with a my handheld rotary cutter and inserted festive paper drinking straws.

I am pleased as punch with the way these turned out, and I hope you will be too! You can download your free Valentine’s printables below or here. I can’t BELIEVE it’s almost February! Can’t you just smell the love that’s in the air? Or maybe it’s cupcakes. Either way, enjoy!

Valentine Cupcake+Straw Toppers

Airplane Valentine 4×6

Airplane Valentine Letter

Heart Balloon Valentine 4×6

Heart Balloon Valentine Letter

Airplane Bag Toppers 4×6

Airplane Bag Toppers Letter

I made these marshmallow pops for my daughter’s winter princess party.

I had bought all the supplies: large pink marshmallows, squirtable white cookie icing (the kind that sets and comes in a sort of glue bottle), pink pearl nonpareils and 6 in. lollipop sticks–but thought surely I’d run out of time before the party started.

It was literally 15 minutes before the guests came. I tried it to see if it would work, and had what I think are great results given how totally easy they are to make. No, really. If you can use glue, you can do this. The kids L.O.V.E. to eat them, and it’s something that’s not messy that they can help make!

Pour nonpareils on a plate, follow the directions for preparing the cookie icing (*note: after some trial and error, I only heated mine for a fraction of the time it called for because hot icing=runny icing) and apply a THIN layer to the top of the marshmallow. Press the icing side of the marshmallow face down into the nonpareils.

Then lift and fill in any holes in the coverage and neaten the edges by hand. Set face up on a plate to dry. Once dry, insert lollipop stick into opposite side of marshmallow.

I cut some simple leaf shapes out of green paper and used a small hole punch (and a little wriggling) to thread the lollipop sticks through.

And Voila! A marshmallow rose.

If you want to do this step, it’s easier to add the leaves before you insert the stick into the marshmallow. My small hole punch was a little too small so I made a couple of overlapping punches to make the hole a bit bigger. We are giving a half dozen “roses” to teachers for Valentine’s Day wrapped in tissue paper and cellophane bags like real flowers would be.

I think this would also be cute for a Valentine’s party, as a festive centerpiece for a springtime shower, Easter parties or for other party themes where roses/flowers play a part–Beauty and the Beast, Bachelor/Bachelorette finale watching parties (do people have those anymore?) You get the idea. How would you use these?

Yep. Here we are. Valentine’s Day is upon us. It was just Thanksgiving and now, at least in the South, we’ve got bathing suit weather barreling down on us. Awesome. All the more reason to steer clear of the candy if you can. We’re still working through the avalanche of Christmas treats that live in what my kids call “the basket.” Ugh.

I’m going rogue here and avoiding the candy almost entirely. Alas, when I spotted these adorably large heart suckers in the dollar bin at Target, I could not resist. You can make even the most commonplace of V-Day goodies festive with a cute tag and a playful message. These gift enclosures were made with a grosgrain tie and a rounded corner option.

Last year, I dug these little mailboxes (also from the hallowed bins of dollar goodness at Target). Imagine my delight when I spotted them again this year. My kiddos are both fairly into mail. Getting it, sending it, making it, checking it. So I figure that most kids are. Ages ago I bought some inexpensive blank white cards and envelopes at Michael’s Arts and Crafts and let my oldest make his own cards to send to friends and family for various occasions. I was back at Michael’s the other day and spotted an assorted pack of Valentine’s Card Stock Paper. They come 25 sheets to a pack and were on sale two pack for $5. I thought it would be cute to do some Make Your Own Valentine’s kits this year to include with the mailboxes. I just scored each page the long way and cut them in half to make folding cards. I think I’ll throw in a few envelopes just because my son LOVES that part and because of Pink Peppermint Paper, I happen to buy them in boxes of 250, but you could always just include some stickers to seal the Valentines.

Here are the mailboxes. Aren’t they sweet? I think they would also be charming as decorations for a Valentine’s Day Party. Don’t you agree?

And here are the cards I made for the kids to make their own Valentine’s.  These are for my daughter’s class of two-year-old pals. They are really into trying to peel and place stickers and are starting to color so will probably include some of those things to make it more fun for them.

Or if you want to include individual stickers or other lose frills, you can enclose your kits in zip-top bags. This also works nicely because as with most things like this, no plan is perfect. The mailboxes have a lid on each end and the cards at this standard size are too long, so you can just throw the extra lid in the bag for later use and let the mail just hang out like it’s too stuffed to close!

And finally a slightly more random idea. I got off on a tangent thinking about things that make your heart race. You know really get it pumping. I found some Disney jump ropes at a local discount store and decided that would be a fun alternative to candy for my son’s class of three- and four-year old buds.

Ahhh…the jump rope. Great for learning coordination. Great exercise. If you haven’t picked one up in a while, give it a try. Talk about wearing yourself out. More importantly, it will wear the kids out. My son is already begging for the race car rope he saw in my hand. And hey, if he can’t quite get the hang of jumping it yet, I’m sure he’ll find alternate uses. I’m fully anticipating that he will convert his little sister’s Cozy Coupe into a tow truck in no time compliments of that Max and Ruby episode we’ve seen 50 times.

Hope you’ve seen something that makes your heart flutter. If you like what you’re seeing, please leave a comment at the top of this or any of our posts. Funny thing about a blog is that it’s hard to know if anyone is reading it if no one comments!

And if you are in the market for some cutie V-Day cupcake toppers, check out these freebies  from Creative Party Place. Enjoy!