Strawberry Shortbread Cookies

Strawberry Shortbread Cookies



1 cup of butter, softened (2 sticks)

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/3 cup freeze-dried strawberries, ground into a fine powder in either a food processor or blender

2 cups of flour


Use a low setting on mixer to blend room temperature butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add powdered strawberries. Mix well. Add flour a half cup at a time, mixing until it is all incorporated.

Roll the dough out in a sausage shape. If you wish to add colored decorating sugar, roll the dough in about 2 tablespoons of red sugar, Wrap the sausage-shaped dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour. The refrigeration will make the dough easier to slice.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.



Slice and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. The cookies will not spread while baking. They shouldn't touch, but they can be placed about a centimeter apart and it will be fine.

Bake 10-12 minutes.

The round slices of dough can also be easily shaped into hearts before baking.

If you do not want to use any artificial food coloring in your family's Valentine treats, these cookies, minus the decorating sugar, are a nice pink color without anything artificial.

Springtime Has Arrived in Florida

We had a good week here, even though the rest of the country is under record-breaking snow and ice.

Facebook was full of pictures like these this morning:





Blaze and I spent Tuesday afternoon at Maclay Gardens, looking at the camellias, azaleas, and magnolias that are now in bloom.













The house/museum at Maclay Gardens is only open January through April, so this was our first time being able to tour the house.















Thursday was the Tallahassee Homeschool Valentine party at Optimist Park.



The children made some very creative boxes to hold their valentines.







There were lots of goodies, as well.

The Lots of Love Bento

This was the first time all school year that Blaze and I had lunch at school. Usually we leave at lunch time, but today was the school Valentine's Day party after lunch.

Here is the special heart-theme bento that I made for us to share:



My sweetie had to go out of town early this morning, and won't be back for a week. He has a week-long job excavating a shell mound in a National Park, which requires him and the rest of the crew to camp out in a tent for the week. Before he left, though, he did show me a picture of the Valentine's gift he ordered for me.



I am so excited, because a little tea kettle was the last thing I wanted to add to the supplies for my picnic basket, and this one is really cute!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As I was looking for material on YouTube to use for our upcoming science unit about ears and hearing, I found this Valentine sign language lesson from Signing Time.



I really like vintage Valentine cards, so I printed off a few that I found online, using cardstock, to use as decorations on the tinsel tree in Blaze's room.



This is a very simple way to make ornaments. Just glue a loop of ribbon to the back of the cards and then make a frame around the card, using either glitter glue or gluing on decorative trim. The red tinsel-like trim is my favorite. I had saved it from a package I received for Christmas.

A Candy Jar for Valentine's Day

About a month ago, we were looking at some apothecary jars and DH told me he would like to have some someday, because he likes the way they look. For Valentine's Day, I decided to start his collection. I purchased a jar at Michael's, filled it with candy, and made a label for it. I found the label design as a free printable graphic here:

http://graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/2010/03/free-vintage-clip-art-fancy-frame.html

If you have never seen The Graphic Fairy website before, I highly encourage you to spend some time browsing. It's full of wonderful vintage graphics, and more are being added all the time.

Here is the finished label:



and here is the whole jar:

Lacey Valentine

Blaze has asked that the tinsel tree I made him for Christmas, be left up in his room year-round and be decorated for other holidays, so we have begun making Valentine ornaments.

This simple heart shaped ornament, made by weaving a red pipestem cleaner in and out through a piece of cotton lace, is our first Valentine's Day decoration.





When enough lace had been woven onto the pipestem cleaner to make it look ruffled, twist the ends of the pipestem cleaner together so that the ends no longer show. Then bend into a heart shape.



Arrange the lace to cover the entire heart and add a decorative ribbon or string for hanging.

Quick Valentine Sweets

Happy Valentines Day a little early!

Today was the elementary Valentine's Day party at the school and one of the little girls gave me a Valentine that was so cute, that I wanted to share it.



After Blaze ate the lollypop out of it, I took it apart to see how it was made:




Blaze and I also made candy to give to DH for Valentine's Day.



We started off with a bag of Starlight Mints and 20-ounce package of almond bark candy.



I unwrapped all of the mints and placed them in a gallon size zip-lock bag. Then, Blaze got to do the fun job of pounding on the candies with his hammer until they were all crushed.



I followed the package directions for melting the almond back in the microwave. Then, we stirred 1 Cup of crushed mint candy into the melted almond bark.

We tried 3 different methods of making the candies into heart shapes. I had two candy canes left over from Christmas, so that was our first heart.

This one came out so well, that I wish I had more leftover candy canes.




Then we made some with the silicon muffin pans and some by just spreading the candy into heart shapes on some aluminum foil.



I hope everyone has a very happy Valentine's Day!

Playing with Pancakes

 Yes, I've been playing with my food again. This time I put pancake batter in the squirt bottle to see what I could do with it.

I really liked this next one. I put cinnamon in the batter that was in the squirt bottle, so it was darker in color than the rest of the batter. I made the heart shape first with the cinnamon batter and then filled it in with the plain batter.

I tried a spiral design, too.

Valentine Breakfast, YUM!