valentine

 I don't always make Valentine's Day biscuits... 

but when I do, they have Darth Vader on them.

 

Recipe:

    150g butter, at room temperature
    75g caster sugar
    225g plain flour
    Icing sugar and cocoa powder
    Coloured icing and shape cutters

1. Preheat the oven to 170C

2. Dump butter, flour and sugar into the ball and add a wee pinch of salt. Rub it all together until you have a big dough ball.

3. Dust your work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Roll to about ½ cm thick. Cut out heart shapes with a biscuit cutter and gently lay out onto a lined baking sheet. Bake for 15-25 minutes, until golden. Leave to cool on a rack.

4. Now dust your work surface with icing sugar, and roll out your coloured icing. Cut out the shapes (I used awesome Star Wars ones from ebay, and little stars) and lay them out on a baking tray until you need them.

5. When cooled completely, mix together few tablespoons of icing sugar with cocoa powder and enough water to make a paste. Spread the over the biscuits with a knife. You can then use this as glue to attach your icing shapes.

Our cards

 

This was Bee's Valentine's gift

february love project

For those who don't know...
THE FEBRUARY LOVE PROJECT:
1. Collect rocks.
2. Paint hearts on them.
3. Put them back outside for people to find.

Today was phase 1 of stage 3!
We've got a lots of stones to place during the next couple of weeks :)

it's that lady on my knickers

"Mummy! Look! It's that lady on your knickers!"
(she means WonderWoman. I have WonderWoman pants.)
Yesterday was a Dungeons and Dragons/ Lego day. I built a Lego spacecraft of some kind, we built a Megabloks Moshi Monster thing (Mega Bloks are pretty crappy compared to Lego, but it's a cute kit, and was on special offer) and we put together Bee's new Lego Darth Vader watch. She's been periodically announcing that it's "Darth Vader one o'clock" or "Darth Vader past three" all day.

I also made my little mini At-At (I have resigned myself to the fact that I'll probably never own THE Lego At-At) and I am actually mega excited right now, because my wonderful lovely Bestest has bought me the Lego VW Camper I've been mooning over for the last 18 months! Eeeek!!! I'm a very lucky girl indeed.

And today, we've been finishing off our rocks for the February Love Project, and I released my first one into the wild, tonight. Wonder if it'll still be there in the morning?

Bee: Mummy, will you get me a Valentine's card for Love Day?

Me: Yes, of course. I always do, because I love you.

Bee: Great. So I'd like a Darth Maul one please. But it has to be a Love Day card which says Valentines on it, and a picture of Darth Maul, OK?

    This random cat totally photobombed my origami swan photo.

Getting drunk on rum and attempting to follow complicated YouTube origami tutorials at 2am is not recommended. You know, just for the record. I used this tutorial for the awesome heart-bat. It probably would have turned out better without the rum, but the attempt may have been less amusing.

hurrah for lovely love

Bee woke me this morning with a question: "How old are you, Mummy?"
So I told her. She said "So you're getting closer to when you'll die one day."
And off she went to play. Thanks for that, darling!

This cheered me up, though...

(Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, along with Wild Kratts, is Bee's most recent obsession)

So it's been a gentle recovery day, today.
I ordered some pretty ribbonses from Scrapunzel (the pics are clickable)

...and I'm starting to get all Valentinesy. 

I think Bee and I need to make some of these!! From Spoonful.

I know it's not very cool or whatever to enjoy Valentines Day. I know I'm supposed to say "it's all commercial nonsense, capitalist trickery, I don't need to be told how to show people I love them, I do it every day etc. etc." but you know what? Holidays are what you make of them, and you get to choose whether to participate. And I *love* an excuse to spoil people and spread happies.

Which brings me to the February Love Project.

Last February, we painted rocks (in acrylics and nail varnish, for waterproofness) all different colours, with hearts on them, and we left them all over the place for people to find. I decided to make this a tradition every February. This year, we're doing the rocks at our monthly home-ed group (tomorrow) and then some laminated cards to tie to railings and bus stops etc at our weekly group (on Valentine's day) as well. Yay! Want to join in? I'd love to hear about it, and see photos :)

We got started a little early this year, as you can see in this post.

HURRAH FOR LOVELY LOVE!