Valentine's Day Fortune Cookies and Printable Gift Tags

Valentine's Day is almost here and we will soon have chocolate and rose bearers knocking down our doors! I love this time of year. Everything is beautifully white with snow and we have extra comforters on our beds. We can sit safely inside, at our candle lit dinners, as the snow gathers against the windowpanes. It's already so beautiful, then comes along Valentine's Day and we find cute little cards and hunt down flowers to show those we love how much they mean to us. 

 What are your romantic plans for the holiday? 

Why not make some super cute, Chocolate Covered Fortune Cookies?

Whether you make these for/with your kids or for that special someone in your life, anyone would appreciate this delectable commemoration of the holiday. They are super fun to make and an excellent crowd-pleaser! 

I made them as favors for a Valentine's Day Dinner.

What you'll Need

• Chocolate Chips or Melting Chocolate
• Parchment or Wax Paper
• Baking sheet (Optional)
• Fortune Cookies 
• Valentine's Sprinkles
• Saucepan and Metal Bowl or A Double Boiler
• Rubber Spatula 

I used two 12 oz bags of chocolate chips, one of white and one of semi-sweet milk. But I also made about 150 cookies... So, unless you are making 150 cookies, you shouldn't need that much chocolate. 

The fortune cookies are from Market Basket. They have bags of them for under $2.00 with approximately 40 cookies in them! It's an amazing deal. If you can't get to a Market Basket, I know Walmart had some, though not for as good a price. You can buy them HERE which is a better deal than Walmart, but not as good as Market Basket. If you're looking for them at your grocery store they are generally kept in the produce department. I know... Go figure. 

Also, you should buy more fortune cookies than you'll need. Some of them will be broken. 

I wanted sprinkles that were more specifically for Valentine's Day than just pink and red (Like little hearts or something) But I had the darndest time finding them in the stores. I have, since, looked on Amazon and they do have some that are super cute! 

Melt the White chocolate on a low temp

Prep: You'll need to open all of the fortune cookies (If yours are individually wrapped.)  If you're doing this with kids, they should all be opened ahead of time. It can take a while to open them - especially if you are making 150 of them - and they can easily break in the process if you're not careful getting the wrapper open. 

Set up your double boiler. I just used a small sauce pan and a stainless steal bowl that fit nicely on top. Put water into the pot so it just kisses the bottom of the bowl. Put your chocolate into the bowl. This double boiler method will allow the chocolate to melt with out it being directly on the heat, preventing it from burning. 

Lay out the Parchment (or Wax) paper on the counter. If you need to transport them before they harden you can put the paper on a baking sheet rather than on the counter. 

Prepare for the sprinkles by setting out a plate that you can shake them over for minimal mess.... who am I kidding? There will be sprinkles everywhere. The plate's really just there to make you feel better about yourself. 

Melting Milk Chocolate: Melt the milk chocolate with the heat at medium. Once it's all melted turn the heat to low or simmer to keep it warm. Stir occasionally.

Melting White Chocolate: White chocolate doesn't behave the same way as milk or dark chocolate when it's melting. You have to keep the temperature at low or simmer and be really patient with it. If you have the heat too high, or rush it, you'll cook the chocolate, causing it to be lumpy. Which doesn't work at all for dipping. Stir occasionally.

Don't melt all of the chocolate at once. You can start with a little and keep adding to it as you go. It's hard to estimate how much you'll need and this keeps you from wasting any. It will also keep the white chocolate from being over the heat for too long. 

Dipping and Decorating: Now for the fun part. 

Once the chocolate is all melted dip the cookies into the chocolate. Before the Chocolate hardens, hold the cookie above the prepared plate and sprinkle your sprinkles over it. I did also try dipping the cookies into the sprinkles. It seems with the white chocolate the dipping method works okay, but the milk chocolate look a lot better if the sprinkles are shaken/poured over them. 

Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe with kids the tidy factor of dipping outweighs the attractive factor of sprinkling. 

Place the dipped and decorated cookies onto the parchment paper with the nicest side facing up. Leave them till the chocolate hardens. After about 10-15 minutes they peal off of the paper beautifully. 

Print out the Valentine's Day Tags given below.  Place the cookies into little plastic bags and tie the tag on with a pretty pink ribbon. 

   

Valentine's Day Tags - PDF

I made these cookies the same way (only with these cool metallic and pearl sprinkles) as favors for Our New Years Party and they were a big hit. I've included the PDF for the New Year's tags if you want to make more chocolate dipped fortune cookies to celebrate at the end of the year! 

New Years Tags - PDF

If you make these, leave a comment with your link. I'd love to visit your page and see the cookies you make!  Happy Valentine's Day

Now, three of these remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.  ~  1 Corinthians 13:13

Our Second Annual Costume Party

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope you all had an excellent holiday season, I know I did! Have you made any great plans for the coming year? 

To celebrate 2017 my family had our Second Annual New Years Costume Party. It was so much fun. Last year was great, but not as great as I had hoped. Due to last years disappointment, I almost didn't have a party this year. We decided to give it another shot to see how it goes (and because I practically attack any chance to wear a costume) and it was smashing! 

My Eldest brother, Forest, is at Fairwood Bible School and, being home for the holidays, he would have been here anyways, but a number of the other students came as well. We also had friends (some whom we hadn't even met yet) from NY come. Church friends came. Family from MA came. It was a fantastic party. I'm not even sure the exact count of how many people were at the party, but I do know we had 11 extra people staying in our home that night in addition to the six of us. 

I have to say, I really love having a house big enough to be able to do this kind of thing. 

All of the costumes were amazing, however the only two I can say much of are mine and my sister's. Mary was Princess Leia and I was Glinda, the good Witch from the Wizard of Oz.

The Princess Leia costume is a a very basic tunic made from a bed sheet. We made a belt to go around it and put her hair up in double sock buns (tutorial to come.)

My costume took a lot more to create, but it was 100% worth it.


MAKING MY COSTUME:

I started with a wedding dress I had found at a thrift store. I asked the woman working there how much it cost and she nearly begged me to take it. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of it before I started taking it apart but it wasn't all that pretty. Quite outdated. I removed from the dress the train, 4 bows (three on the front and one huge one on the back), an uncountable amount of tiny white beads, and almost all of the lace, of which there was an abundance. To make it witchy (in a good witch sense) I attached tulle to the sleeves and neck, a tacky decorative square thing to the chest, a HUGE butterfly to the collar, silver beads to the waist,  and 12 yards of pink tulle to the skirt. I also added a myriad of sparkly things for added bling. The crown I made of wax paper and tulle (I will make a tutorial for that later as well). Then I just had to snatch up a wand, put an entire thing of blush on my cheeks, and I was ready to party.

This is by far the girliest ensemble I have ever donned. It's especially unlike me if you consider the fact that last year I was an incredibly accurate Captain Jack Sparrow (a costume I will forever take pride in.) Though I must say, I do like the shock factor that comes when one wears 12 yards of pink tulle. Although, I did have to remind people, repeatedly, that I was a witch... not a princess.

I have already disassembled my dress and have a very exciting project in mind for all that tulle. Details will follow.

COSTUMES:

Among the other characters we had were Audrey Hepburn, Effie Trinket (From the Hunger Games), Super Girl, Mr. Clean, John Luke Picard, Captain Jack Sparrow (Borrowing my costume from last year. Although he was much more in character than I was last year!), a Cowboy, a Ninja, Etc. 

GAMES:

One game we played was a party game I have seen on many different websites, under many different names. I'm not sure exactly who came up with it first, but the idea is that everyone is given a silly phrase for the night. The goal is to say your phrase throughout the night in conversation without anyone realizing that you're using your phrase, you also will try to catch others using theirs. It's great fun. You do have to go off of an honor system and have everyone keep a tally of their own score. It's not exactly a game others can score you on as the whole point is to not get caught. I think it works pretty well though, I just made sure to remind them all ahead of time that lying is a sin and that Jesus was watching. 

 Some of the phrases I used were: 

• I could really go for some peanut butter
• I used to be vegan
• Cut the green wire
• I've escaped Alcatraz 
• Like a confused dinosaur 

HERE is the printable PDF page of all the silly phrases I thought up if you want to play this at your own party. It's really a big hit. 

I almost regretted not getting to play this (I knew all the phrases, so it wouldn't exactly be fair) but it really was fun to be able to hear people get away with using them in conversation. 

The other game we played is a trivia/jenga game I created that involved a stacking game like Jenga only with numbers printed on the pieces. HERE is the one I ordered. Each block that was pulled had a new year's themed question according to the number on the block. They aren't easy questions and as everyone was playing I was almost grateful that I already knew the answers and therefore couldn't play. It was a tremendous amount of fun to watch though.

I have written up detailed instructions on how to play and I would definitely recommend this for your next gathering. HERE is a link to the instructions where you can also find a PDF of the questions I used at our party.

And of course I had to dress Lexie up to match

These Chocolate covered Fortune Cookies were the party favors. They were fun to make and such a huge hit! I have a tutorial HERE for how I made them and the tags you can print to make them for Valentine's Day. The image is a link to the tags and sign that you can print at home!

And I'm already eager to plan the our Third Annual! 

Do you have any holiday traditions that excite you? Leave a comment, I would love to hear about them!