Valentines Decorating

Valentines is coming soon so I got out my bins of February Valentines Decor and got busy today...

It's amazing how much stuff I've got stashed in those flippy white and red bins! 

This is my coffee table.....I love this little stained glass heart box....

This is great little pillow for a Hot Potato Game....for a kid's Valentines Party

I can't believe how much stuff I've accumulated.....

Living Room Valentines Table decor.....

 I worked at Kohls while getting my Master's Degree in Education....so I got great discounts
on lots of their fun decorations at holidays..... It's hard not to go overboard though....:D

So anyway, here's inside my front door......

My dining room picture wall....each season I change the black metal cone contents.....and
hang some new ribbons or a swag of some sort on the wrought iron bar.....

Great Room entry......I love this jingle bell heart.....

Hanging from the dining room chandelier...lots of hearts here....

I got some heart suckers for my grandbabies....

Kitchen table....I love placemats and runners.....and I change out the candle colors each season....

This little plate rack in my kitchen I've got Holiday plates for every season now....
Well....except for 4th of July...Maybe I can find some red, white and blue ones....hehe....

Valentines Picture Wall of my family and grandkids....

Outside on the front door I hung a heart ornament on a beaded wreath....I'm so crafty...hehe....

Front entry table....I love this light up LOVE lamp....it stays on all season long.....

My 3 sons and my darling first granddaughter....some of my fav peeps.....

My grandkids love all of my candy dishes...only thing is....these conversation
hearts are like a year old....I buy them after the season...they are for looks only! I actually think they might break your teeth if you chomped down on one of em......

I love this little cupid lamp.....Got it at Kohls after Valentines Sale.  

 I've got Valentines Decorations all up now! Ye Haw! 

A Treat for our Military

What did you think of Madge's Super Bowl Halftime Show?  I thought it ended on a fantastic note but I waited awhile to feel like it got started. The dancers and their costumes on the beginning 2 songs were just so so. And she picked kind of low key songs to play to the biggest crowd on earth, I thought. She should have picked her best standard songs, the ones we all recognize.NOT a new, unrecognizable, kind of boring song.

 But her costumes were good and I liked the tightrope dancer and the choir behind her. I don't know what cheerleaders were all about, that was kinda weird.  And I guess the World Peace, although cheesy was a good message at the end. She always has some kind of message.

The worst thing during the game was seeing on the running tape under the t.v. feed  that Susan Powell's husband had blown he and his kids up. The poor social worker who dropped the boys off and then was barred from entering the home. She smelled gas and couldn't do anything about it. That's such an awful position to put another human being in. I can't believe that guy is such a gutless pig. The inlaws knew he might do something like this and their worst fears came true. How would you live after having your daughter murdered and then you 2 little grandsons, who you had custody of, murdered too. What a poor excuse for a human being. And he left a 3 word "sorry" note to his lawyer.

On a bright note, I loved reading this news in the paper today:


Frank Guidara, CEO of the Boston-based pizza chain Uno's


 and a Vietnam vet himself, teamed up with Pizzas4Patriots


 and DHL Express to ship 10,000(!) deep-dish pizzas to U.S


 troops in Afghanistan who will be able to watch the New


 England Patriots versus the New York Giants this Sunday.


      
 In the past three years, Guidara and his team have sent


 over about 70,000 pizzas to troops for the Super Bowl and


 for the Fourth of July. "We put a lot of time and effort into 


it. Every employee in this company gets so excited


 about this. They have that sense of pride."

That's what I love about America. There's always a silver lining to the bad things that happen. 

There's also the good.  Three Cheers for you UNOS and Frank Guidara! YOU ROCK!  Even if 

Madonna didn't rock all that much. After all, she IS in her mid 50s. I think she did a good job. 

Superbowl Party Foods

Which team will win the Super Bowl on Sunday?  There are always some sports fans among my graders who know the score. They know the players and the teams. They even knew the team colors, can you believe that?  They all love Tom Brady. My kids think he's going to be on the winning team.

Well, we shall see.   I have a fun little challenge for my classroom kids.  Those who predict the winner correctly will win a football sweatband for their wrist.  Those that predict incorrectly get to do 12 pushups.   And I have lost in years past. It wasn't pretty watching me trying to do more than 12. So we keep it at 12 pushups.

 

Our class graph....looks like the Patriots might be the favorite!  

This easy baked brie has dried cherries and pecans and jam inside. I shape it like a football and then cover it with puff pastry. The recipe for the Baked Brie is HERE.  At the Pepperidge Farm Website you can also watch a video on how to make the Baked Brie. It is to die for Yummy as a cracker dip!

I shaped my brie cheese like a football

I put the letters on with the extra puff pastry. I fill it with raspberry jam, some brown sugar, pecans and dried cherries. I wait to bake it till just before the Super Bowl starts.  Triscuits, Pretzel Ritz and Wheat Thins are good with it.....

Yummy baked brie with dried cranberries and pecans inside..

This yummy stuff is my black bean and corn and avocado salsa.  It's a really fresh and kind of filling and really good! 

This yummy black bean salsa is made from black eyed peas OR black beans, white sweet corn, green pepper,
avocado, tomato, cilantro and purple onion, with a few dashes of lime and Italian Salad Dressing and salt and pepper. It's a crowd pleaser with Tostitos and these yummy pretzel crackers. and very filling! .

HERE at the Family Fun website I found these cute cupcake football players I thought would be super cute to make for a Super Bowl Get together......M and Ms for the eyes and yellow buttons, black skinny licorice for the facemask.  Kids would LOVE these.

These cookies were from "On the Record Sports" and would be easy to make
from a chocolate cookie recipe....Only need a little icing in white!

Here at Luxe Finds was a cute way to do your 7 layer dip on the top....just make the guacamole
layer show on top and make lines from a piped bit of sour cream....then top with 2 colors of cherry tomatoes....so cute! 

Now here's my dipped strawberries...what if you added the white laces in white chocolate on
top...and removed the stems...wouldn't they look like footballs? Yeah they would....yum...another idea....

Another bunch of cupcakes that even looked easier were these "football" shaped cupcakes....
or make them as sugar cookies topped with chocolate icing and the white lacing....EASY!




  
Those will be good Super Bowl Party foods, won't they? They'll go nicely with PIGS IN A BLANKET  and chicken wings FOR SURE! 

HAPPY SUPER BOWL PARTYING! 

Beachy Bedroom Redo

Beachy Bedroom Decor

Well, it is almost done.  I'm posting the pictures of the  basement bedroom today.  I just about have all the decor done.  We still want to change it from a windowed room to a patio glass door room, so we can easily get in and out to go to the jacuzzi in the winter.  As it is, it's absolutely NO FUN walking down around the backyard hill in the FREAKING COLD SNOW!  (I actually thought about climbing through the window.....maybe I could get a ladder and ......uh...well....I'll think about that one.)

We took out the mini blinds and the light fixtures and bought fresh new ones.....after painting everything ice blue.....

We ripped up the old, beige carpet, and put in new wood flooring....I didn't take very many pics of it though......Oops! 

Anyway here are the "BEFORE" pictures.  We had a water pipe freeze last winter so we had a little leaking in our walls and had to fix the pipes after the winter thaw.   The plumber tore out this HUGE piece of my wall!  And then just left it that way!  It was really gross! (nightmares of things crawling out of walls in the night....eek!)

Here is the work of my crazy plumber neighbor down the street!  But at least he found the leak!  Yucky!
My hubs did a great patch job.....see if you can find it in the  "after" pictures? 

Finished "Mariner" themed room.....

Lots of Beach blue and white and shell and lighthouse decor......

Beach themed rooms are so easy because decorations are everywhere with the white and blue color scheme! 

The blue and white "Star" quilt I purchased at a quilt shop.....

We repainted all the baseboards in the room too.  It looks really nice in there now. 

You can't even see it but behind this mirror is the repaired hole in the wall you can see in the first pic.

 Here's a good picture of the new wood flooring in the Mariner bedroom. And you can see the paint color contrast between the light ice blue and the marine blue walls.

My hubs did this wood flooring.  It is a vast improvement on the carpeting we had . 

 Anyway....after patching up all the walls with some wallboard and then plaster, (my hubs is quite the handyman stud!), we painted one wall a darker marine blue, and the other 3 walls and closet a pale ice blue.

 Then I started looking for "MARINER" themed decorations all over the place.  They are easy to find.

Here's the bookcase and the dark blue wall decor......I found lots of lighthouses......So pretty!   

 I got this really neato lighthouse decoration at Christmas time at Target.  It is one of those things that has color changing lights.  The top of the lighthouse actually works and spins and changes colors. It is the neatest thing ever if you see it at night!

I made this magnet board and my idea is to collect postcards from all the beaches I travel to.......
and attach them with these shell magnets I made with shells glued to circle magnets with hot glue. 

I know this is a dumb picture in here....I gotta find something that fits.....But I love this sailboat frame.....

We got this light up dolphin night light to add some blue ambiance to the room at night....

One of my kids got this giant stuffed fish at a carnival I think....but it works in the room ! 

Lighthouse and sailboat tapestry.....I sent away for this too, from a catalog....It's pretty in person....

I made a silk flower arrangement in blue and white in a "shell" designed, ceramic planter container.

I loved the lighthouse collection on these plates....can't remember where I found them....but it looks good on a skinny wall to the side of the bed....

I got this "Beach House" frame at Bed, Bath and Beyond....I always find stuff there....

This is a Martha Stewart summer chair I got at Kmart for $45.00.  I love how wicker really goes well with a beach theme.....

My super tiny, lighthouse tea set that is maybe useful for Tinkerbell!  Way tiny that thing......I succumbed to some fancy advertising....I hate when that happens. 

Here's the table and chair and the new, white, faux wood mini blind....notice the light blue paint? So pretty! 

 The lamp I found at Pier 1 Imports for....get this.....ten bucks!  Yeah!  I love a deal!  I called all over to the surrounding cities at all the Pier 1 stores to find a match....but they were all gone.  It is really beautiful up close. The top has a sand dollar finial on it.   It's really pretty. 

I loved this beachy tray I found at Micheals.... 

 This little lighthouse "tea set" I got from a catalog, thinking it would be, you know, a real little tea set, not one for Thumbelina!!  My husband laughed at it when it came in the mail in its tiny packaging. I guess I should look at the measurements of things in the future.

 I have a collection of shells from living near the Pacific Ocean most of my life.  We spent every summer hanging out at the beach as a kid, a teenager, and as a young mother.  My kids love the beach. We have many happy memories spending time in Redondo, Torrance, Huntington and Seal Beaches.

So I guess the BEACH theme and all the shells and lighthouses have been a lot of fun for me. It brings back so many happy memories and times.  I'm a California beach girl at heart.

A set of shell pictures from T. J. Maxx  my favorite store!!!

Wall collage of beachy pictures....and a tiny, old crate I painted white and added shells and candles....

Just outside the window is the backyard patio and a jacuzzi.....our next project is to push out this window and make it
a glass doorway so we can get to our jacuzzi when it snows.....without freezing our little xxxx's off! 

Cute little nautical box I found at T.J. Maxx

My magnet board....I have 1 post card so far....Salt Lake...all my postcards will be from trips...that's the goal....

Lighthouse decor is popular now too....I found lots of lighthouse pictures at
Bed, Bath and Beyond....and used a 20% off coupon too!   

The Beachy Bedroom decor is a great guest room too! 

Here's the patio decor right outside the window....hope by next summer we will have the glass french door
put in replacing the window....it just will be so much easier than walking down in the snow (or climbing out through the window! We've actually done that on a particularly snowy day!

Hope you enjoyed my Mariner Room.... I sure love it....