As a kid, Valentine's Day was always my favorite Holiday. I'd like to think I've evolved beyond my love for paper hearts, glitter and cupcakes, but this is probably not the case. I love everything about Valentine's Day! The Holiday seems to take the one thing I like about Halloween (candy and sweets) and replace the horribly scary concepts of murder and trickery with expressing love and gratitude for those in our lives we appreciate the most. Instead of scary costumes, we can wear vibrant pinks, purples and reds-splashed with hearts, of course! What is there not to love about Valentine's Day? Even when I was single (I was single for a LONG time), I used Valentine's Day as an excuse to shower friends and family with festive cards and homemade sweets. I urge those of you who hold great disdain for Valentine's Day, because you consider it a Holiday reserved for couples, to go and make reservations for diner with someone you love. This could be a grandmother, best friend, cousin, etc. Valentine's Day is happy, and why not celebrate a day that gives us an excuse to love and be happy?
I made 2 different variations of sugar cookie recipes found here and here. Using 5 different shaped heart cookie cutters, I divvied up all the dough and baked in shifts. For half of the cookies I made a simple icing that yields bright, shiny colors and an easy to spread consistency. From now on, it will be my "go-to" icing recipe. I beat half the icing with vanilla extract and half with almond extract. For ultimate control when icing, I purchased some inexpensive plastic bottles with skinny tips. The second batch of sugar cookies were prepared to become Linzer cookies with jam and powdered sugar. I used both raspberry and grape jam for variety.
All of the treats were eventually packaged together in cellophane with ribbon, and shipped out to friends and family.
For the Valentines, I created hearts using a needle with thread and supplies purchased at Paper Source.
Because I only had enough thread to make four cards, I also used simple paper hearts, glitter and festive envelopes to create an extra 10. Just as fun as when I was a kid!
Happy Valentine's Day!
