Valentine Tea Party

 

One of my favorite teas to host is my Valentine Tea which I hold the Saturday before Valentine's Day.  

 I love pulling out my array of vintage books, cups and saucers, gloves and jewelry to decorate with.

 To protect my tea cups in the centerpieces, I use the battery-operated candles.  Draping vintage necklaces over the edge of the cup adds more charm.

I always provide the ladies with a small gift to take home. This year I made book marks.

My Valentine menu varies but always includes these Cranberry Orange Scones (recipe on my Tea Party page) served with homemade lemon curd, jam and Devonshire cream.

The scones are followed by our "Savories" course which typically includes fruited chicken salad, cucumber dill and egg salad sandwiches.

And check out this sweet 3-tier server

I picked up for 1.50 last week at my local thrift store!

Finally, dessert.  I always give myself a break and include either mini-eclairs or in this case, cheese cakes from Aldi.  I made sugar cookies and frosted them with dark chocolate icing and made mini vanilla cupcakes with pink frosting.

For more ideas on hosting your own tea party, you can visit my Tea Parties page.  Tea parties are a beautiful way to allow your guests the opportunity to sit back, relax and enjoy this special event in the midst of our hectic schedules.  

 

Vintage Music Print Tutorial

 

This is another example of multi-purpose decorating.  These frames hang on my dining room wall year round and I just change out the pictures.  After making lots of these for gifts I finally came up with a super easy way to print a graphic over the music just perfectly.

1.  Open an Excel document.

2.  Do a Google search for the graphic of sheet music.  For example, I searched for "Let Me Call You Sweetheart Sheet Music".  Copy and paste the image into the Excel document.

 

3.  Resize the music image to fit your frame.  Print it out on your paper.

4.  Find the graphic you want to print over the music.  Copy and paste it ON TOP of the sheet music in the Excel file; resize and position it to appear where you want on the music image.

 

5.  Now click on the SHEET MUSIC image and delete it.  This will leave the graphic in place.  Now insert the paper with the music into the printer and print again and your graphic will print exactly over the music where you want it.

 

I like to choose a line or two from the song, print it out and turn this into a little tag.  The tags are attached with Sticky Tack so they too can be removed and stored.

When it's time for the next holiday, just remove the prints, tags and store between pieces of cardboard which means you're storing less but still have lots to decorate with!

 

Valentine Mantle

For my Valentine's Day mantle, I pulled together some items like these book stacks I made embellished with red ribbon and hearts from the dollar store.  

 This porcelain cherub was 1.00 at my thrift store.  I also have several vintage Valentine postcards that I added to the vignettes.

 And how perfect is this book I found in my 'stash'??

 On the other end, more book stacks and the frame that I change out for different holidays.

 I just print out different poems/verses and replace them in the frame.  That way, I store the piece of paper, not the whole frame!

 This little vintage Lefton angel was an Ebay find . . . I just adore her!

 Can you tell that Valentine's Day is one of my favorite holidays to decorate for?? Such a bright spot in the dreary days of January and February in the Midwest! Do you decorate for Valentine's Day?

 

Valentine Ladder

My ladder is like my "dress up doll".  I'm having so much fun changing it up for the holidays!  Here it is dressed for Valentine's Day.

 I wanted to keep it simple so just added this picture I already had as well as a few vintage hankies and candy boxes.

 And since it's snowing like mad outside, blustery and cold, I'm enjoying the pop of color Valentine decorations bring!

 

Multi-Purpose Decorating: Take 3

Living in a small house with little storage space I've learned to decorate my home with items that can easily be converted for several holidays.  This centerpiece on my dining room table is one of them.  Starting out as a $5.00 thrift find (1/2 price day!), this Crate & Barrel candle holder has had three "lives" . . . so far.  Originally it looked like this:

 Then dressed for Autumn/Thanksgiving:

 Next for Christmas:

 And now for Valentine's Day:

 I replaced the tapered candle holders with these dollar store ones because I like the rounded shape better.  The heart garlands are necklaces from the Target Dollar Spot (3/1.00) that I cut apart.  

 The hearts are from the dollar store. I removed the sticks and hot glued them together in a "mound" adding some red beads and stones.  So, when it comes time to store these, I'll just remove the hearts and garland and leave the candle holder to be decorated for the next season.