Valentine's Day Tree

For years I have wanted to do a Valentine tree. This year I finally did!

I also did a lot of dining room decorating.

I also love vintage valentines.

It has been such fun!

Valentine Dinner Party is Over

I have to say  I enjoyed most of the preparations, but it was a lot of work   DH was a big help today. Without him I would never have gotten everything done on time.

Just look at this mess from this morning:

and it's only for the dessert!  I even did some of the dessert prep last night and I still had all of these dishes this morning.
I used Karo syrup to rim the martini-turned-desert-serving glasses

and then rolled the rim in red and white sugar.

The syrup and sugar hardened and gave a fun sweet crunch to the dessert. We were all eating it off the rim!
Just before everyone arrived, I snapped a few pictures. It's a good thing I did because I never even thought of the camera after that.

Here are some shrimp cocktail filled shells that I made for an appetizer. There are only two left, so I guess they went over well.

I also made these cheesy biscuits topped with garlic butter and chives:

That's about it for food pics. Unfortunately I never thought to take a picture of the main items:

Chicken Stuffed with ham and Muenster cheese

or

Chicken Florentine
Hearts of Romaine & Strawberry Salad

Oven roasted maple-glazed carrots

Hasselback Potatoes

Everyone but DH chose the Chicken Florentine.  I made two choices so I could have lots of leftovers to freeze for a later meal.

At least I did get some pics of  that mixed berry mousse dessert that nearly did me in.

Everyone raved over it. I thought it was good, but I don't think I want to do that much work again just for dessert.

Here is the centerpiece(s) I decided to use.  I had a problem keeping the diamond floating candles lit. 
They only burned a few minutes and then went out. 

My quick napkin ring--just a piece of  knotted wired ribbon with a heart tied to it.

Look how the dessert matches the table. I could not have done better if I planned it that way....Oh, yeah, I did plan it! :)

And here's the full table with the red glasses.



I am now done entertaining for a while. 

I have already striped the table down and everything has been cleaned up and put away.

Next weekend I am just going to take it easy.

Where did the Week Go?

It seems like I looked up and it's been a week since I posted!

I have slept a lot during the past week. I guess I  have just been  too relaxed from the nightly bubble baths DH and I have been taking.

pic from From covepoconoresorts.com

LOL.  I wish.

I really have not been doing anything post worthy.

About an hour ago, I  looked out and saw my front yard full of turkeys:

But that is nothing new. They are here every day.

I have not had my dinner party yet. It's Sunday.  But I did make a new wine label for my chocolate wine last week.

I also made the pink chair back drapes and found the napkins I will use.

I even found the"Love" fabric flowers I made last year.

 I put them around the big martini glass centerpiece. I have to say the .50 I paid for this at a garage sale a few years ago, is the best 50 cents I have spent in a long time.

Other than that, I have done nothing--hence the lack of posts.

Hopefully, I will do something more exciting next week. :)

I Added a Few Items to My Valentine Decorating

Whenever I think of something for my Valentine dinner party, I put it out to see how it will work. It's much better to find out what flops well before the night of the dinner!

I think Valentine's day is perfect to use the chocolate wine I received at Christmas.  Since it's a red wine mixed with chocolate, these red wine glasses would be perfect to serve it.  I set them out in a heart-shaped serving platter on the sled table that I filled with vintage valentines.

The table is only a few feet from the dining room, so I think it will work nicely.

I also put the vintage valentines all around two pictures that are on the dining room walls.

There is a large picture hanging on the wall  on each side of the table, so as you sit eating your dinner you will see these every time you look up.  I don't really like seeing the artwork in the center, so if I get really ambitious, I may cover the artwork with fabric or wrapping paper.   At the moment I am not thinking I will get that ambitious. :)

I made a "hugs & kisses" bunting (that's the proper name for those heart-shaped words) that I thought I would use on the table with the chalkboard over it, but it does not work there.  So I put it on top of the china cabinet in the dining room.

On the other side of the dining room, I have the curio cabinet that I showed you last week. I added the pink fabric and a boutonniere from our wedding almost a quarter century ago.

I can't think of a better decoration for the LOVE holiday. :)

At the moment I am pretty happy with everything.  I am going to make a blackberry/raspberry mousse for dessert that I have never made before. Yes, I admit, I planned it to match my pink/purple table.  I just hope it turns out!

I Had No Idea that I would be so Busy on Sunday

I woke up  before 5:00 a.m. and read a few blogs.  Then I started a new sewing project--turning a small portion of  the big heavy jean quilt I made a few years ago (actually seven years ago--time flies) into a table runner and a pot holder.

My long-term readers may remember that I spent months hand quilting a denim quilt and then it was way too heavy to sleep under. I finally decided to cut it up last year

and make something useful from it.  I frayed the edges of the runner and pot holder and I am fairly happy with how they turned out.  Of course, this is just a tiny portion of the king-sized quilt.  There will be many more projects to make from this quilt.

The only day I cook breakfast is on Sunday.  Right after doing so today, I started putzing about in the dining room. I wanted to get all of my dishes, etc. out for the dinner I will have in two weeks.

Here is the color scheme I plan to use:

I may change the glasses to red. I will show you the full table when I have the party.

After determining the table colors, I have no idea what happened. 

Somehow I ended up on a ladder removing my chickens and cookie jar collection from the top of my kitchen cabinets and

 washing them

(yes, I do use a toothbrush to get the dust from all the indented areas).

I did some rearranging of my advertising cookie jar collection and removed all of the faux greenery that I used to love.  I wanted a more streamlined look atop the cupboards.

I love this Mr.Peanut cookie jar, so I put him center stage above the stove fan:

Above the cupboards I had some fruit crates that were a dark green &  sponge-painted.  Yeah, like how outdated is that?   I asked DH to repaint them green and he did.  What a wonderful man! 

He did the painting  right on top of the family room carpet. Of course he put some paint blankets down before he started.  

Here is where one of the crates ended up:

It gives a nice pop of green in back of the chicken casserole.  The second one will go on top of the big section of  dish storage cabinets.

While he painted the crates, I painted the mat of a dark nautical oil painting I have in the family room.

Last year I painted it that gold color you see, but now I think it should be white as most of the other artwork mats in the family room are white.  Here it is done and rehung:

I like it. Thank goodness as there were about a dozen screws to remove from the inner frame before painting and it was not all that easy to get both frames and the mat back on.  Thanks DH for your help putting it back together!

So Saturday was rather relaxing and Sunday was a ton of unplanned work. I did not get all of the kitchen done, but after five hours, I decided to quit and do more after work this week.  It is a big job to get all of the kitchen grease and grime off the top of all the cabinets. Even though I had no plans to do so much work today,  I feel good about my weekend accomplishments. 

I hope you all feel good about your weekend, too.

I am Beginning to Plan my Valentine's Dinner Party

I love vintage valentines.  I wonder how the school girls felt when they got one of these sweet valentines from a half century ago. 

Imagining  a young girl giving this one to her boy of choice makes me chuckle:

I have been doing a little Valentine's day decorating as I find the items I already own.

I found a bag of these never-used lettered blocks in the basement last week. I was thrilled to find four blocks with the letters I needed for the upcoming holiday.  I combined them with a bag of glittered items I bought last year and made a couple of decorations for the top of the two dining room china/curio cabinets.

I will only be home one weekend from now until Valentine's Day, so I need to make my plans for my dinner party with DH's two brothers and their wives.
I searched my tablescaping blog to see previous tables I have set for Valentine's day.  I found a few, which gave me some idea of what I have to work with. Because, honestly, I forget at least half of the dishes and dining accessories I own!

I think I will use the red goblets for sure.  I would also like to use some vintage Valentines on the table.  At the moment I am planning on a purple tablecloth. Now that I see the lace overlay on pink, I may use that on the purple.  Then again, half of the dinner guests will be men, so I don't want to get to prissy.  We shall see.  It is great to have years of blog posts to look back and see what I have. Without the blogs, I would never have remembered all of this stuff!

I would love to use the red fabric rosettes that say "love",

 but I can't remember where I put them!  If strawberries look good in February, I may dip some in chocolate and nuts because I remember that these were very delicious last year. 

I am planning on stuffed chicken breasts and these Parmesan-crusted potatoes for dinner: I will throw a bit of pimento in the chicken filling for that splash of red color.

 I think a healthy fruit dessert would be nice, but I am not sure if that is what I will do. If the pears and strawberries look good a few days prior to my dinner, I may do both.  Then again, chocolate is always nice.............I am also planning on shrimp cocktails and a veggie--probably carrots to give some color. I think I will skip the salad ...or I could do just two shrimp in a heart shape and a small salad .... the planning is such fun, don't you think?

I really do love the planning of dinner parties.  I just hope it all turns out as I envision it!

Valentine Sweets for My Sweetie

Happy Valentine's Day!


I  spent a lot of  my weekend  in the kitchen. Strawberries looked good when DH was shopping, so I made spinach/strawberry salad for Sunday lunch and then decorated these four berries  with

some leftover melting chocolate.  I just love the look of jumbo berries dipped in chocolate and nuts.  I guess you can tell that since I used them in my new header.  Each one got its own heart-shaped plate and was slowly devoured with every bite  enjoyed to the fullest.

I bought a new Wilton heart cutter--one of those big thick ones-- and decided to make boxed brownies to try it out.

I am not too thrilled with it, but I think it's because the brownies were under cooked and did not cut cleanly.  I threw away about half of them because they were too gooey in the center.

I also did a lot of sewing this weekend.  One of the items I made was a Dresden plate (name of the old quilt patten) placemat to go with my black and red dishes.  I do love designing table items to match my many sets of dishes.

 But instead of the black/red dishes,  I decided to use them with glass dishes so I could put one of my Vintage valentines under each plate.

That marshmallow stick on the top of the plate is cute, but it tasted awful! So bad it was inedible. So don't buy them if you see them marked down after the holiday. Well, buy them if you want to, I don't mean to tell you what to do, but I can't imagine that anybody could eat one of those--it was like chewing on a rubber tire.

Hope you all have a great Valentine's Day!

Fresh Flower Bouquet comes Alive with My Dried Artemesia

My wonderful grocery-shopping husband came home with a little surprise tucked into one of his cheap  supermarket bags--you know, those bags that are so thin they never make it from the car to the kitchen without ripping apart.  As he came through the door, I heard an angry expletive and I went to see what all the commotion was about.

He made a reference to "cheap bags" and I  made some empathic remark as canned goods rolled across floor. He reached down among the debris and  picked up a cellophane bag of mini carnations and handed them to me. Awwwwwwwwww...what a guy!  I really need to make him some sturdy fabric shopping bags.

I thought I would put the tiny flowers in a teacup, but when I opened my dish cupboard, I saw this vintage creamer and decided it would be perfect.

 Unfortunately there were not enough mini carnations to cover the floral foam.  I thought maybe I could find some artificial flowers that would work.

 When I went to the basement, I found a pot of  artemesia that I had picked last fall. 

I always like to keep this on hand for winter bouquets.  It is not all that pretty on its own, but it is the best filler I know of -- both in the summer when it's fresh and in the winter when it's dried.

I think it worked perfectly for what I needed today!
  Unfortunately I did not think to take a picture of the sparse bouquet and I was not about to pull out all of the artemesia just to get one. You will have to trust me that without the filler, it was nothing.


Did you notice that I finished my Valentine table runner? I posted about it on my other blog. Just click here if you want to see the full runner.

I have also been searching the net for vintage valentines, which I have printed out to use on my Valentine table next month.  I have found some cute old valentines. I am not exactly sure what I will do with them, but I am thinking some of them will be used with these fabric love flowers for the centerpiece.

It's snowing here again today. It looks like another weekend holed up in my sewing room, with breaks to cook and clean. I do enjoy these weekends!