Valentine's Day Treats

How many times on this blog have I said that I'm not very crafty? A quick search of HermanNation brought me to at least 4 such references:

Christmas Snowflakes
Halloween Treats
Mod Podge Thanksgiving Decoration
Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

I realize I'm starting to sound like a broken record. Some of you are probably thinking to yourselves, "Amy, you really need some fresh opening lines." But, now that I think about it, I think I'm justified to start my "crafty" blogs with this admission. Because, really. The fact that I've done only 4 crafty things since my blog's inception in September of 2008? Four projects in 16 months? Triannual (Who knew that meant three times a year? Thank goodness for Google!) craft projects does not a "crafty" person make, by any stretch of anyone's imagination! So you will most likely have to bear with me as I continue to use this moniker to describe, well, the antithesis of me.

So, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm excited to share with you my latest project. Valentine's Day treats! Because, thanks to the overwhelming (at least in Ivie's and my minds) success of the marshmallow mummies, Nutter Butter ghosts, and Thanksgiving turkeys, I now feel pressured to take fun snacks to Ivie's class at school for holidays.

I searched around on various blogs to try to find something worthy of making (Read: EASY). And I stumbled across candy-coated pretzels. Somewhere. I'd give you the link, but you can probably find them anywhere if you search for "Valentine's candy-coated pretzels". And since it's not really a tough project, I don't feel too guilty for not remembering to save the paper on which I have the blog's name so that I could give them credit.

So all you really need are pretzels and candy melts. And a microwave, of course. And don't forget the wax paper. (Although normal people generally have this in their pantry as a "staple". I, however, did not. We must have just been "out". Wink, wink.)

So here are the supplies (minus the wax paper, which was originally in the picture but got cropped out):


And, 2 hours later (mostly because I was distracted at times by the UNC vs. Duke men's basketball game), here are the yummy results!


A few comments about these. I'm pretty proud of the icing swirl decoration. Can you tell? I intended to do it only on a few of them, but got carried away with excitement when I finally discovered the "art" of doing it successfully. And I ended up swirling all of them! Oh, and in case you're wondering about the "art"? That's a fancy way of saying, "Get-some-candy-melt-on-the-end-of-the-tablespoon-and shake-it-wildly-over-the-pretzels." And, wha-laaaa! As my co-worker so elegantly put it this morning when I was bragging over the pictures, "it actually looks like you knew what you were doing!". Thanks, Lance.

By the way, rest assured that I only took the time to do the little white heart on ONE pretzel (the one pictured). It took way too long. And the frantically-shaking-the-spoon method of decorating was a lot more fun. Until clean-up time, at least.

OK, so enough about the pretzels. Moving on.

Since I didn't make enough pretzels to put any more than 3 in each of the kids' take-home Valentine's Day goodie bags (because I had to make a separate batch for them to actually eat at snack time tomorrow), I needed something else. So I used an idea I found at Schlosser Designs. What a cute way to make ordinary candy into something "love"ly, huh? Too bad the template for the labels didn't line up, even after trying her "tip" at the bottom for when that exact thing happens. But, thankfully, I was able to use the "Snipping Tool" on my computer to get the images and make them work in the Avery template. Whew. I would have been frustrated to have purchased that $9 box of 30 SHEETS of labels for no reason. Really? What in the world am I going to do with 30 sheets of these things?

Probably make candy covers for every single holiday this year. That's what. So be ready for the blogs.

But I digress. Here is the end result of the wrapped candies and the completed goodie bags. Aren't they adorable?


So another holiday of treat-making has come and gone. Though I do have some pretzels and candy melt left over, so I might make a few more this weekend. Because I only had about 5 or 6 left over after packing the treat bags last night. And that's not enough for me to enjoy, particularly since the girls had a few of them this morning. After their fruit cups. For dessert. Really.