VALENTINES DAY PARTY. DIY | GUEST POST
Today I am excited to introduce you to an another amazing blogger. Britney is full of energy and creative ideas! She is sharing 5 Valentines inspired crafts & recipes to complete any Valentines Day party.
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Hello everyone!
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Hello everyone!
I'm Britney and I have a little bit of knowledge about almost everything.
Everything parenting, kids, DIY projects, organization; the list goes on forever. I am the mother of a very smart toddler and the wife of an ingenious and handsome man. I run the house while my husband works his Monday-Friday job on top of my never-ending desire to keep the house clean and in good functionality.
Thank you, Kendra, for having me here at Open Spaces today- I am honored! Today I will be discussing our small Valentine party I hosted for our son.
Making buttercream was a first for me as I've never made real buttercream before. Even though the recipe was not the consistency I expected, it tasted spectacular! All you need is four ingredients!
Here is the recipe:
Strawberry Buttercream 1 cup fresh strawberries 1 cup butter 4 cups confectioners' sugar 1 tsp vanilla extract Puree the freshly washed strawberries until smooth in a blender. Boil the puree in a saucepan until it is reduced to half. Cook longer if you want a really intense strawberry taste. In a separate mixing bowl, beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla extract. While mixing, alternate adding in the sugar and puree. Add one cup of sugar at a time then a little bit of puree in the mixing process until you have used it all. Beat an additional two minutes. After frosting the cupcakes, I added leftover royal icing transfers I made the week before.
Here is a template for the filigree hearts over at my blog – I outlined the hearts and iced squiggles in the middle. As for the drop flowers and they are easy peasy to make! For anything royal icing- related, I always refer to
The Sweet Adventures of Sugar Belle. You can add anything you want to the cupcakes or leave them with only frosting- they taste great either way! Here's how my batch turned out!
2- Chocolate Covered Strawberries: I prefer to wash the fresh strawberries the day before I cover them in chocolate. I washed them, dried with a paper towel and then put them back in the refrigerator until the next day (this ensures complete dryness). The night before the party I melted chocolate chip morsels in a double boiler until it is a smooth consistency and free of any lumps.
While I wait, I set up my strawberries on their serving platter. Doing this is easier for me because I will know where to set the strawberries and which side to put them after dipping them without the strawberries rolling around and making a chocolate-ly mess on the platter. Like this-
Make sure to include toothpicks or a spoon in your dunking setup just in case you lose a strawberry! I simply rotated the strawberries in the chocolate to completely cover, scraped the bottom of the strawberry on the side of the bowl, then held the strawberry pointed up – a way to get the pointing tip of chocolate to tuck under the strawberry. These strawberries tasted wonderful- they kids adored them!
3- Mini Strawberry Milkshakes: These are super cute and extremely easy to do. Even I was able to do a fantastic job! Simply setup your station to put the sprinkles on the rim like this: I used a pack of 24 plastic shot glasses ($1 at the Dollar Tree!). Since water would not work in having the sprinkles stick, I used a tiny bit of orange juice for the liquid part. I set the cup in the bowl of sprinkles, picked up the bowl, and swirled it around. And that's it! Use any milkshake recipe you want and carefully pour in the cups as soon as your guests arrive. I topped ours with cream! Here is the turn out:
4- Candy-filled Centerpiece: For the candy-filled centerpiece, I got each item from the dollar store as well. I loved that the color of artificial flowers paired nicely with the colors of the candy hearts. You can use any kind of unwrapped candy pieces in this project as well as any kind of flowers you want too! First, I arranged the flowers how I wanted them to look in my hand. Remember to keep in mind the front, try to match them in height, and pull all the petals forward so that the flowers look neat. Next, I taped the stems when I found the way I wanted them to look. Comparing to the size of my vase, I folded the stems upward- you can cut them if you want but do remember there is wire so you would need clippers! Thirdly, I poured about two-thirds of the candy in the vase them stuffed in the stems of the flowers then added the rest of the candy. And to finish the project, I added a ribbon bow to mine! Overall, the centerpiece took me 20 minutes (because I'm a perfectionist) and $7 at the dollar store! Isn't it beautiful!
5- Construction Paper Heart Wreath: Lastly, I want to talk about my construction paper wreath. This DIY project was perfect for the one day I needed it. All of my guests wanted to know how it was done. I used about 10 pieces of construction paper. I cut them into thirds, lengthwise and had my stapler handy.
I simply curled the strips so that the ends met. To save time, I stapled two strips together at the same time. Be sure not to crease the paper or you'll have pointed edges instead of rounded. I stapled, like you see. Then
repeat this process. This time, slip the ends into the heart-shape you just made. Like this:
I kept like this until I had two of the 8 heart sets. I stapled the two ends. And then tucked the construction paper in a way that it made a heart shape. Here is what the finished project looked like:
Pheww! All the prep is now complete! Last thing to do is setup your table and wait for everyone to arrive! We had tremendous loads of fun, I can't wait to do it again next year!
Thank you for reading, and thank you for having me! Britney @
Life as a Mom Plus More
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