Soda-lighted it's Valentine's Day!

Possibly one of my favorite vintage Valentines ever! Found via Pinterest.

PS--The visit with the Project Manager yesterday went well--as I type, there are dudes in my basement building a new subfloor! It's a Valentine's Day Miracle!

Doily painted and reverse-applique Valentine shirt

If you don't have young kids in your home, you probably don't get Family Fun magazine, so you probably will have not seen the darling doily-print t-shirts they had on the cover of the February issue. Let me catch you up:

So cute, right? I knew as soon as I saw that picture that I wanted to make a shirt for Maren. Back when I made her Christmas reverse applique shirt, I botched my first attempt and had to buy a new red t-shirt. This left me with an otherwise-perfectly-good red shirt with pen marks right in the center, and what better way to cover them than a cute stenciled doily heart?

If you don't get Family Fun magazine, you can find the instructions and another photo here. And a warning--the color red freaks out my camera so my photos are all a little bright.

Before I made the shirt, I spent a good while with an Xacto knife, making sure all of the little holes in the doily were clear of hanging chads. It took a while, but it was worth it because the final product had a nicer pattern.

To adhere the doily to the shirt while you paint, the instructions advise you to put a light coat of glue stick on the back of the doily. I suspected that this was a bad idea--the doily would act like a cheese grater and glue would come up through the holes. I was right--even though I applied the glue stick sparingly, I still had to use a toothpick to poke chunks of glue out of the holes before I could paint.

Once the doily was adhered, I used white fabric paint and a foam stencil brush to daub paint carefully over the doily. I found that the wet paint caused the thin paper doily to curl and move, so if I didn't get a good coating of paint the first time I wasn't able to really fix it. I also had to be careful not to use too much paint and have it blob through the holes and lose the delicate lacy pattern.

Here's how the shirt looked after I removed the paper doily. The puckery part in the middle is where the glue grabbed onto the fabric and pulled as I removed the paper.

I had so much fun, that I grabbed an old shirt of my own and a handful of doilies and went to down. I went a little bit overboard, but I think the effect is cool and I like how they look like snowflakes on the gray shirt.

Remember how Maren's shirt had inkstains in the middle that I needed to cover? Well, some of them still showed in the unpainted middle of the heart, so I had to do something else. Reverse applique to the rescue! It took me about 15 minutes to fix while we watched the Grammy awards on Sunday night. I used a scrap of pale pink fabric and white embroidery thread and just followed the inside of the heart with my stitches. I love how it turned out and with the addition of a fancy hairdo

she looked perfectly sweet for Valentine's Day!

Valentine's decor 2012

Just wanted to share a few glimpses of the Valentine's decorations around my home before I pack them up for another year..

My Valentine for The Mister. I used three rolls of Rolos covered in red paper and a silver pipe cleaner folded at the top to look like the fuse. I found this idea on Pinterest (my pin) but the original source is here.

I had some friends over and we made these cute pennant flags. So easy and festive!

75¢ thrifted vintage Relpo Valentine planter. Was going to sell it but I love it too much!

I don't love how the top of the china cabinet turned out, but I was too tired to do anything about it.

A different kind of wreath: a giant pinwheel made of pleated rectangle doilies, a red and white 4th of July fan, and a shiny red heart doily.

I also made a few smaller pennant flags using stripey straws instead of skewers for the sticks

Love that giant thrifted spool of red thread! Perfect for pinning a vintage heart doily.

I used my estate sale pink Lu-Ray plates to add color to my china cabinet.

Festive candy corn in a thrifted vintage Hazel Atlas nut chopper

Queen of Hearts Valentine dinner

I knew that this year I wanted to make a special Valentine's Day dinner for my family, and was delighted when I found this cute idea with free printables for a Queen of Hearts dinner. You can even watch a video segment about it HERE (it won't let me embed for some reason). The Queen of Hearts is significant to The Mister and me (it was the first Valentine I ever gave to him!), so I knew that I wanted to use the ideas.

For our dinner, I made a special meal. There was a local restaurant in Provo called Ottavio's that The Mister and I loved to visit while we were dating, and my favorite dish was called Rigatoni Ottavio's. A few years later, I was able to get the recipe through a column in a local newspaper that would contact local restaurants for readers. The dish is a lot of work, expensive, and has about a zillion calories so it's definitely a special occasion food! I'll post the recipe separately because it's long.

To go with the Rigatoni Ottavio's, I intended to make garlic bread, but then remembered that at Ottavio's they served fresh focaccia bread with olive oil and vinegar for dipping. I've never made it before and am generally scared of making yeast breads, but I was able to find an Easy Focaccia bread recipe that truly was easy and turned out great! It tasted just like the bread we used to get at the restaurant.

For dessert at Ottavio's, we always used to order the enormous slice of chocolate cake. I didn't want to make a huge cake this time, so I made another treat that I've been craving: individual Molten Chocolate Cakes. I've never been able to make the little cakes before because I didn't have any ramekins. A quick trip to Home Goods the other day solved that problem!

Because of the cute ramekins, I didn't bother unmolding the cakes. One thing I did from another recipe was to coat the dishes with white granulated sugar after I buttered them--this gives a slightly crunchy texture to the outside of the cake that contrasts nicely with the gooey chocolate center.

As it turned out, I didn't go as much with the Queen of Hearts card theme as I had originally intended. I was so busy cooking all day and I didn't have a pack of cards that I was willing to use up! I think it all looked nice anyway and I know my family appreciated the good food and my hard work, and I was happy to do it to show my love for them!