Food Friday: Valentine's Day Fun

Since Valentine's Day is right around the corner, I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite ideas for making the day special. In our house we always bake a heart shaped pizza, and other fun heart shaped treats. So of course these heart shaped calzones caught my attention:

Source: blog.craftzine.com via Aimee on Pinterest

Chocolate covered strawberries are another favorite of ours, so when I saw this idea for strawberry brownie cupcakes I had to remember it! Don't they look amazing?

Source: iheart2stamp.com via Aimee on Pinterest

Heart shaped whoopie pies, to put you in the mood for making whoopie! ;) These are red velvet, but I bet they would be pretty amazing in vanilla too if you added a little red food coloring.

Source: polliblog.com via Aimee on Pinterest

What do you do for Valentine's day in your house? Do you have something that you always make? A tradition that you keep?

The "C" Word

On Christmas Eve we learned that our 11 year old niece has cancer. The prognosis is wonderful for a full recovery, but she will be undergoing chemo for the next 10 months. We are doing what we can to help cheer her up.

To say it's been a stressful time over the past year for our family is a bit of an understatement. Between my dear SIL having a brain tumor removed, and suffering serious side effects from it, to my husband having some unknown problems that we are still trying to get resolved, and now for our sweet niece to have cancer, it's a bit much.

Posting may be a bit light around here for a bit while we regain our bearings, but of course life goes on. There is joy in our hearts that while things might be tough, they could be so much worse.

Meanwhile if any of you have ideas for care package items (we have some seriously fun hats that I will share once they have been given) for a young girl, please let me know! We want to make this as easy as we can for her.

IKEA inspiration!

Have you visited the IKEA website lately? It had been some time from my last visit, but since we are in the market for a new headboard and bedding I wanted to see what they had. What I found was awesome! Not only did they have tons of fun items, but they have rooms that you can get inspired by too. Here is a screencap of my favorite:

Since our room is pretty small, I love the idea of adding storage on the side of the bed. Currently we have nightstands, but I really love the way the tall closets on the side look. It also has me thinking of alternatives to the idea of a traditional headboard.

The bedding and the rug are favorites as well. The overall color scheme is really relaxing and pretty, without being too gender specific too (perfect for a married couple's room).

I have to say, exploring sites and getting ideas put together for our little mini-makeover sure is fun! What do you think about the room in the picture?

Tide Coldwater Review

One of the great things about having a house is having your own laundry room. Sure doing laundry isn't one of the most fun things to do, but as household chores go it certainly isn't the worst either! And there always seems to be new and improved products for making laundry easier.

I recently got the change to try out Tide Coldwater thanks to SheSpeaks. I was thrilled to be able to try out a new formula for the brand that I already use for my laundry. Since I already use Tide, I knew that my colors would turn out clean and fresh in coldwater without any problem. The main thing that I wondered about was our whites, since most of them are "underthings" I always feel like they should be washed in hot water to get them really clean. So the challenge was on!

The Tide Coldwater did not disappoint! It got the whites clean and fresh, and I didn't have to use the hot water setting. To spare you, I didn't take before and afters of our unmentionables, but I will tell you that some otherwise very smelly socks came out smelling fresh!

You might be wondering why you would want to switch to cold water washing. For one it saves hot water, which if you have a lot of people in your home can be hard to come by in the shower sometimes! And of course, it conserves energy (since you don't have to heat the water) which will help save money on energy bills. Pretty great, right?

If you want to see how the Tide Coldwater worked for other SheSpeaks members, check out the Tide Coldwater Gallery! SheSpeaks provided the product and compensation for my review, but as always my opinions are my own.