I heard a study recently that said women spend less than $25 on their guys for St. Valentine’s Day but expect their guys to at least spend $250 on them. Seems a little unfair right? I’m sure that counts dinner, but still. Jack and I keep this holiday fairly cheap and we never go out on that night. He usually buys me flowers or a pair of repli-Kate earrings (one’s I don’t make, of course) and I usually get him chocolate or make him some homemade ones. I wanted to do something a little different this year and I decided to make him a candy vase. The ones in the stores are so expensive and not even his favorite candies. I bought a few packages of his favorites, as well as, a few mini bottles of his favorite alcohol. I placed the bottles in a tall vase I already had. Then put some of the fun-sized candy around the bottles to hide them. Next I taped some of the candies to small dowels that were cut at different lengths. I placed those in between the mini bottles. To complete the candy vase, I added black and red tissue paper to make it look more like a flower arrangement. It was a fun gift to make and Jack LOVED it!

This baby blue and light green baby shower cake is just too cute! The cake is so simple and adorable.
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The bottom tier was covered in the light green fondant, and then I placed six 1” thick ribbons of the blue fondant. To finish the tier, I added two ½ thick ribbons between the 1” ribbons.
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The top tier was covered in the baby blue fondant, and then I placed different sized circles all over the cake. Last I added a large plaque welcoming the new baby and finished it off with another ribbon of the 1” thick green fondant.
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It is such a sweet cake to welcome a sweet new little boy!

It’s hard to believe that this was my first opportunity to make a marble cake! This cake is so beautiful, simple and elegant and the best party was the colorful surprise inside!

​The cake consisted of six thin layers of French vanilla cake; each colored a different color of the rainbow. The six layers of cake made each tier abnormally taller than no normal, so next time I think I am going to make the cake layers even thinner. The taller tiers did give the cake a really regal look.

Although the cake decoration was simple I struggled with creating the marble look. I ended up having to put two layers of fondant on the tiers! ​

As I have done the last few holidays, I decorated every room in our house. However, I didn’t go overboard like those. I just put a few small decorations and some new pillows in all the rooms.
 
I started by making a simple red velvet pillow for the chair in the living room, using my go-to quick fold and sew method. For a few pillows, I cut out letters or hearts and used iron-on applique and sewed in place before doing the folded method.
 
I even purchased a few of the pillows at Target for $5 which I loved that price and how cute they were. One of the pillows said “Love you” then on the other side said, “love you more”. This is something Jack and I say all the time so I had to get it, but I wanted to be able to see both phrases. I cut the two panels apart and added light pink fabric to make the fold. The last pillow I did for Andrew’s room I used St. Valentine’s Day ribbon and tied a felt hear on it.
 
They came out so cute and I keep adding to my holiday pillow collection! I love it!