Valentine's Food Fun

Whatever your plans are for Valentine's Day, here are a couple of quick and super-easy ideas involving festive food for the occasion.

Pick up a metal heart cookie cutter at your local store and use it to make a heart-shaped breakfast for your sweeties. This works well for pancakes and eggs. You can also use the cookie cutter to cut hearts out of slices of toast. Don't forget to spray the inside of the cookie cutter with a little bit of cooking spray so the food doesn't stick to it.

Another fun food idea is cutting shapes from brownies and putting a dollap of frosting on top. Wilton has combo cutters in two shapes, "minis" and hearts. I used the minis cutter for these Valentine treats for my co-workers. You can find the minis combo cutter here and the hearts combo cutter here at the Wilton website (see photos below). These cutters are so easy to use, and the three...yes, THREE... batches of brownies I made were cut up in a snap!

(Hearts combo cutter and minis combo cutter. Photos courtesy of Wilton. Links to photos are above.)

Last Minute Super Bowl Idea

I was shopping at Cabela's a few weeks ago (it's an outdoor sportsman's store) and saw a display that they had set up for the Super Bowl. I really liked the "football field" they created, so I grabbed a quick shot of it on my cell phone (sorry for the photo quality).

You can recreate this same idea on a green table cloth or table runner to make it a fun tablescape. Use your creativity to add goalposts and team spirit. Don't forget to leave room for the yummy finger foods! If you are still in need of some ideas for your game-time eats, check out my previous Super Bowl post here.

Stop and Smell the Roses

This sweet display of roses is a sample centerpiece for an upcoming fundraising event I'm working on. We have such wonderful people who are sharing their talents with us to help us create a wonderful event. The inspiration for this event is the organization's 50th anniversary, so the color gold is being used to commemorate the "golden anniversary." Complimentary colors of red and black are also being used throughout the event.

As the event draws closer, I'm grateful to have this centerpiece nestled between my computer monitor and Rolodex. The roses make me smile, pause, and take a deep breath before I jump into the next task. I encourage you to take some time this week to stop and smell the roses... to relax and take a deep breath before moving on. :-)

Glassware

In my day job I plan fundraising events for a non-profit in Washington state. We have a big auction coming up in a few weeks, so my days and work weeks lately have been looong. At any rate, I came across a really cool company in Oregon that is helping us out by printing custom champagne glasses for our event. You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find someone who printed on glass. That was an interesting dilemma, and thank goodness we found a company, even if they are several hundred miles away from us.


Introducing: Tri-S. This company does some amazing print work for breweries and liquor companies (unfortunately, I am not able to re-post any photos from their website, so you'll have to click the link and check out Tri-S for yourself). As I was talking with them the other day, I discovered that they've also done custom print work for weddings and other personal celebrations. One couple had an image of their dog printed on beer glasses along with their names and their wedding date as favors for their wedding guests. I thought I would share the idea with you all and provide you with a quality, reputable, and environmentally responsible company that can handle the job.