Our February DIY Challenge is all about hearts this month. As it should be!

Today I’m going to share with you how to make this cute Valentine’s door hanger. But, before I go any further, I would like to thank Terrie from Decorate With Tip and More. She is our hostess and I love that she always issues the most interesting challenges to us monthly.

Thank you Terrie!

When  the challenge was issued, I had to think long and hard about what I wanted to make. I don’t do a lot of Valentine decor here at the castle and I knew that it not only had to be simple and economical, but had to be cute too. I was at Hobby Lobby and saw these two wooden heart pieces. I knew it was meant to be when the lacy heart fit perfectly inside of the solid wooden heart. Not only were they perfect for each other, combined they were both under $10!

Supplies:
Solid wooden heart
Fancy wooden heart cutout
Pencil
Craft paints
Brushes
Ribbon
Raffia
E6000 Glue

Step 1:

Remove the red ribbon on the solid heart, making sure to keep it for later. Cut off the twine string at the top of the fancy cutout heart. You can throw the twine away, or keep it for another project, as we won’t need it for this craft. Lay your heart with the cutouts on top of the solid heart.
Using a pencil, trace around the fancy heart.

Step 2:

Paint inside of the traced heart white. This acts as a primer for the red paint that we will be painting this heart later. Painting the brown heart white first will make the red paint look nice and bright!

Step 3: 

Once  your white paint has dried, paint the outside edge of your solid wooden heart black. Be sure to paint the outside edges as well. Let dry.

Step 4:

While you are waiting on the paint to dry, paint your fancy cutout heart white. The edges on this heart are a dark stain already, which I liked. So I didn’t bother to paint the edges.

Step 5:

Once your black paint has dried, paint your white center heart red. This may require two coats to achieve even coverage. Be sure to let it dry between coats. Once your red heart is finished, outline the red in gold. Paint the gold on the outside edge of the red.

Step 6:

Using E6000 glue, I brushed the glue onto the back of the fancy cutout heart and then carefully lined it up with the red heart and firmly pressed down. Remember the gold outline I painted? The gold outline should be on the outside of the fancy cutout heart. I placed several large, heavy books on top of the cutout heart and left it over night to dry.

Step 7:

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t get a picture of the next step.
Thank goodness it is super easy and simple. This step requires a pencil with an eraser that you haven’t used.

You will use the eraser tip as a stamp to create the red and white dots on the painted black heart. Just dip the eraser end in paint and apply the paint covered tip randomly to the black painted area. Once that has dried, retie your red ribbon to the heart.

Step 8:

Make a simple bow and add it to the upper left hand side of the heart.
Ta da! It’s finished!
I love how this heart turned out. It checks all the boxes for me. I really do think that it would be cute both on your front door or inside your home. And best of all, I made this entire door hanger for under $12.00. Cute and economical. It’s a win for sure!

Now I hope that you will join me in visiting the other talented bloggers that are participating in this months DIY Challenge! 

     DIY Vibes/ Cloches and Lavender/Jessica B Simmons /Blessings By Me/Blue Sky at Home

Just Another Farmhouse /CD Country Living /Sew Sassy by Paula /Sweet Southern Grace / Decorate and More with Tip

Through A Vintage Door /The House House / Patina and Paint

I don’t know about you, but we don’t spend a lot of time or money on Valentine’s Day. It’s not that I don’t like Valentine’s Day. I mean, what’s not to like? Cards, candy, hearts from your loved ones. That’s a good day to me. I think that the biggest reason we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day in a big way is that we are just coming off Christmas and in January we celebrate 8 birthdays of family and friends. It’s a lot! However, while I don’t go all out for Valentine’s Day, I do want to give it a nod even if I don’t always have a ton of time. Today I’m sharing how to set a Valentine’s Table in 15 minutes or less!

Okay, set your timer and let’s go! First, start with a clean table. If you are like me and you don’t have a red table cloth or table runner a cute alternative is wrapping paper. The great thing about wrapping paper is that when you are done, you can simply throw it away or if your family is way neater than mine, you can use it to wrap a gift at a later date!

Next, I perused my placemats and found these red ones that I used at Christmas. I love their texture against the smooth wrapping paper.

After the placemat, it was charger time. I admit to a ten second debate with myself to use either the bright red one you see here, or a gold one. As you can see, the red won.

Since I had a lot of red going on, I used white hob nail dinner and salad plates. I use these a lot because they are so versatile. In this case I used two different patterns to give my place setting a little interest.

Next up, napkins. I chose to use a white linen napkin that has the cutest teeny tiny pom pom trim. Instead of a traditional napkin ring, I used red ribbon with tiny white poms on it. Just tie it in a bow and you are all set. I had a few sticky backed felt hearts left over from another project and knew that they would be a perfect embellishment for the ribbon napkin rings.

A red water glass and silverware complete the place settings for my Valentine’s table.

We are not done yet! I still have about 6 minutes left.
Every table needs a cute centerpiece. Don’t have time to go buy fresh flowers? I used a white stoneware pitcher and filled it with red napkins. Popped it onto a wooden tray and filled in the open spots with greenery and red hearts. The centerpiece was finished! Simple, fast and easy.

My Valentine’s table is finished with plenty of time to spare. And it was done in under 15 minutes. I love that it’s cute, but more importantly I love that everything that I used, I already had.

Now if you wanted to, you could always add a few extra touches to glam it up a bit more. Wouldn’t vintage valentines be cute to lay around the table?Or if you have extra chocolate candy pieces, it would be super cute to put a piece at each place setting for dessert. Maybe some conversation hearts? Although at our house there are no extra pieces of candy laying around, trust me!

What better way to show your loved ones that you love them than making dinner just a little extra special. And the best part is that you used what you had on hand and that it took very little time to put it all together!

I hope that you have a wonderful Valentine’s Day celebration.

Until next time…

Today I’m sharing my Valentine’s table with you. Specifically, my Valentine’s Day Napkins. No one could be more surprised than me!

Full disclosure: I’m not much of a Valentine’s Day celebrator. I don’t like chocolate. Hey, don’t judge! I’m not really a sweet eater, with one exception. If you are standing in front of iced sugar cookies, girl you best get out of the way! I tell you all of this because I don’t normally decorate a lot for Valentine’s Day except for my kitchen table.

As you can see from the above picture, my Valentine’s table decor is usually pretty simple

This is what I started with.

And to be honest, it was fine.

Cute, colorful and functional.

But, it bugged me.

I mean, where’s the fun in that?

So I did what we all do and hit Pinterest to see what fun ways I could spice up my Valentines’ table.

Specifically, with my napkins.

I started with fun and sweet envelope napkins.

These are fun because you can tuck sweet Valentine messages inside the flap!

Fun, but still not what I wanted.

Then I stumbled upon a heart napkin fold.

Once I folded one, I knew that it was a winner!

The only thing hard about this fold was getting the top of the heart to stay folded.

I had to iron them to stay folded under.

Honestly, if you have a lot of napkins to fold I would totally skip this design.

However, since I only had four, it was doable.

I love how my Valentine’s Day napkins and table turned out.

This table really is me.

Fun, colorful and simple.

P.S. I did break down and buy a few chocolate truffles for chocolate lovers in the family.

It is Valentine’s Day after all!

Until next time….

P.S. I hope that you check out the following link parties. Lots of great inspiration.

Happiness is Homemade Link Party

It’s the first Ten on the 10th of the new year. I’m so excited! If you’re new here, that means that ten fun bloggers get together on the 10th of the month to share fabulous fun ideas for under $10.00. A great big thanks to Carol from Blue Sky at Home for hosting this month. This months theme is Valentine’s, so I’m sharing a fun and easy mixed media Valentine’s decor project.

So, let’s get this party started!

List of supplies:

Wooden blocks of various sizes. I used scrap wood from The Hubs pile of scrap boards. Sizes varied from 8″x8″, 6″x6″ to 3″x3″.

Paint colors of your choices.

Paint brush.

Scrap fabric.

Glue.

Embellishments of your choice. Honestly, I raided my craft room for ribbon, stamp pads, paint, string, upholstery tacks and scrapbook supplies.

The first step is to paint all sides of the block of wood.

Then, lightly sand the edges.

Next, I used a stamp pad to antique the blocks edges.

Then, cut out hearts to fit the center of each block.

Once the hearts were cut out, I roughed up the edges of the heart so that they look a little worn.

Next step, glue the hearts to the center of the board.

Time for the fun part – the embellishments.

Let your creative flag fly!

I have to admit that I did buy two things for this project.

These Spare Parts alphabet tiles.

And a package of keys.

Both came from Hobby Lobby, of course!

Here’s my finished project.

I love it!

So much so, that I made a few more.

Not only are these cute mixed media Valentine’s decor, but I think they would be sweet gifts for friends and family.

Due to the fact that I raided my scrap craft supplies, each tile cost me around $1.60 each.

Now that we are done here, I hope that you will join me in hopping over to my fellow Ten on the 10th friend’s sites to see what fun projects they have going on!

Ann at Apple Street Cottage
Benita at Chasing Quaintness
Carol at BlueskyatHome
Cindy at CountyRoad407
Eilis at My Heart Lives Here
Kim at Exquisitely Unremarkable 
Katie at Let’s Add Sprinkles
Laura at Decor to Adore
Susan at Homeroad
Tammy at Patina and Paint

Patti at Pandorasbox

Barbara at French Ethereal

Decor at my house is mixed right now. I have my Valentine’s Day Kitchen and my Mardi Gras living and dining rooms. My house is so confused!

Normally, my Spring decorating goes as follows: We start with Mardi Gras, then Valentine’s Day, followed by St. Patricks Day and finally Easter. However, this year Valentine’s Day is on Ash Wednesday. Mardi Gras, celebrated on Fat Tuesday, is the day before Valentine’s Day.  Have I lost you yet? 

I shared with you my meager Valentine’s Day decorations last week. I guess it inspired me to go to a little more effort for the ones I love. I felt like it was the least I could do to set my Valentine’s Day table!

I usually decorate my formal dining table but this time I just wanted to do this on a smaller scale using things that I already had.  Plus, the kitchen table is really where my family eats almost every meal. And this is for them…

I have a confession to make. A few years ago I wanted some pink place mats to go on my Halloween table. Only thing was, it was impossible to find pink during Halloween. So I decided to spray paint some of the orange placemats I already had. It worked beautifully. I left one side orange and the other side pink. Just in case I wanted to have a complete set of either color. Truly one of my better ideas.

Today it’s the pink set.

Now for some fun layering! After the placemat I added red chargers that I use at Christmas. Dishes? Well you know I love white! And finally, red dessert plates. Eye candy!

Time for napkins. Since we are in the dining room and it is predominately black and white, I pulled out the black with white polka dot bandannas that I used at Halloween. My new napkin rings I bought last summer on sale. First time to use them…More Bling!

Now this is where I add the silverware, but for some reason that picture has vanished.. yikes!

Some red Christmas glasses finished out the place setting.

Now for the centerpiece.  I stole some greenery in a white urn from the living room. Sorry you can’t see it better… another pic mysteriously missing…surely not the camera operators fault?

I had some leftover cut out hearts from the valentine garland that I made, so I used those to make placards with our names printed on them and even tucked a few into the greenery of the centerpiece.

For a little fun I added some “cupid’s arrows” I made from valentine’s straws, cutout hearts and some blingy feathers.

My valentine’s day table is complete.  I thought about adding some bling sprinkled around the table top. Maybe some rose petals sprinkled here or there…but again, we eat here for every meal. I cringe at the thought of having to remove all of that every time I wash the table.  I kind of like it a little more simplified and stream lined – makes it easier for my family to see that I love them!

until next time….

I cannot believe that it is already time to celebrate Valentine’s Day! Seems like it was just yesterday we were eating turkey and putting up the Christmas tree. And January. Well, I have officially dubbed it the official Month of Birthdays. My reason? Ryan, Tyler, Roxanne, Sally, Siana, Heather, Caleb,and Judy. All who have birthdays that I celebrate in the month of January.

I don’t really decorate much for Valentines. We don’t even really do much in the way of gifts. Some candy, a cute little gift – that is about it. Just a little token to say I love you.

My chalkboard is one of the few things I do to celebrate Valentines. This year instead of just drawing my message of love on the board, I added the heart garland. I just love my circuit machine! Makes the garland so much easier. My chalkboard was like a little black dress. It just needed a little joo-ry! Gotta love my Valentine’s Day chalkboard!

OH.. and a little side note…

My paperwhites grew faster than the alien plant in Little Shop of Horrors! ( If you haven’t seen LSOH -you must!) They did everything but scream “Feed me Seymour, Feed me!” They grew so much that they fell over from the weight. I thought I had another plant fail on my hands until I saw a blog post from Yvonne at Stonegable.com.  Seems that just the way paperwhites roll. Her solution?

A few sticks and some ribbon.

I cut some small branches from my tree, stuck them in the dirt and used the ribbon to tie the paperwhites to the sticks.  A cute and easy fix. Thanks Yvonne! Not gonna lie by the time we hit this point they only lasted another week.  Next time I will do this a good week  to two weeks sooner. Yay me! I guess with a little guidance I can grow plants indoors. Maybe!

Until next time….