Valentine's Day Fun

I recognize that I've only made this simply a food blog but I've made a few fun Valentine's crafts lately that I thought might be worth sharing. The first is a wreath made out of Hershey's kisses.

 It's really simple and can easily carry over for holidays. This one is hanging at my work and I think people thoroughly enjoy coming up and grabbing a chocolate.

You will need a styrofoam circle, glue gun, super glue, Hershey's kisses or other candy, ribbon, and for this one I also got a heart to hang in the center.

With the wreath flat on a table (I put newspaper underneath to prevent ruining the table) begin gluing on the candy by putting a small amount of glue on the bottom and then pressing it on the outside edge of the wreath, so that the candy is touching the newspaper covered table. Continue putting the next candy right next to it. Once you've completed a row, do the next row, continuing until the wreath is covered. There's really no wrong or right way to do it. You could also start gluing candy over the whole wreath in any order. 

Using ribbon I tied the heart to hang in the center and then carefully super glue the ribbon to the back. Loop another ribbon through that and super glue it to the back too. Once it's dry, hang it up. 

Next time I make one I will likely paint the styrofoam first to give it some color underneath also so that as candies come off, it stays pretty. With the kisses, if you pull the tab on the candy, the chocolate falls out leaving the wrapper on, which keeps the wreath with some texture and color as the candies disappear.

The next one is something I made for my husband. I sewed 14 little hearts and hid them around our apartment. As he finds them - he puts them back in the jar. Cheesy? Yes - but it's something I hope our kids one day will get a kick out of searching for the hearts. It's Elf on Shelf for Valentines day.

To create the hearts, I folded fabric in half and drew half a heart. I created 5 different shapes and then traced those shapes of 5 other types of fabric. Then I pinned the fabric, wrong sides together, and stitched the heart, leaving a space to turn the heart inside out and stuff. After stuffing, I stitched the hole closed. It does take some patience to stitch smaller hearts, so create bigger hearts if you know that will trouble you.

I ended up with 14 hearts, one didn't make it. I then simply decorating an old Almond Butter jar. The jar is now slowly filling up as my husband finds the hearts, enjoy!