Valentine Lovelies

I have been doing a bit of  Valentine's Day decorating around the manor. Normally I don't do very much.

Winter has been non-existent this year. Last Friday it was 78 degrees on my way home from work and tonight we had thunderstorms. Needless to say the snowflakes, snowmen and pine cones had to be packed up. It is crazy! It seems way too early to decorate for spring, so I pulIed  out my box of Valentine's Day stuff. I got two new magazines for inspiration. These two publications are my favorite for a romantic, shabby style of decorating.

I am still loving my dusty ivories, brown, purples and pinks. I'll try to squeeze a little red into this as well.  I just can't do the typical bright colors befitting the holiday, so I am trying to do a few things and stay true to my color palette. I pulled out some elements to sprinkle around the house.

If you are like me and you don't want to go traditional, I recommend old red worn books, shell hearts, birds, roses and one of my all time favorites, flower pictures with black backgrounds. Here are some displays I came up with.

I love old books for rounding out a vignette. The seashell heart boxes were thrifted, but they are reminiscent of something a sailor would make for his love during the long months out at sea. 

You can find similar boxes at a beachy souvenir shop next time you head to the coast. 

They will look super cute come summer. 

 

Mr. Bill wondered why I had Christmas decorations out. 

The painting is one done by my Great Grandmother Staege. I love the teal of this painting.  

I have been seeing some cute country fabric hearts on Pinterest and Ebay lately, so I decided to bust out the old sewing machine and whip some up. It has been years since I have sewn a heart shaped anything, but the long term memory 
kicked in (Can you say 1987?) and in about 30 minutes I had two cute little hearts. 
One is in a brown ticking and the other in a off white muslin. 
I hot glued a packing string bow and an antique key onto each. I love vintage keys right now.

I also love the look of frosted cookies. But... we are not really supposed to be eating cookies around here. Okay, Bill is not supposed to eat cookies and I only eat cookies when he is not looking.
So I decided to to make them out of salt dough. I looked up the recipe on-line and pulled out my heart cookie cutters.
Here is the recipe;
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour
1/2 warm water
Sounds easy right?
Mix until dough is the consistency of pie crust. Add more flour if too wet. (It was pretty soggy outside the day I made these. The humidity seemed to have no effect.)
Roll out and cut into shapes.

Bake at 200 degrees for 6  hours.

Decorate as desired.
It is so easy. The dough is easier to work with than pie crust. In just a few minutes I had the cookies ready to go in the oven. I decided to make a couple for Easter since there is a 6 hour cooking time and I felt bad using that much energy for faux cookies. I used paint to "frost" but used real sprinkles on top.

I pulled out my Pink Castles by Johnson Brothers dinnerware. 

Have I confessed yet that I have a bit of a china hording problem?

          I think that silver and tranferware are a classic, not over the top, decoration for V.D.

Look at these adorable vintage Valentines. Are they not the cutest? 

I found them at the local craft mall. 

 

I love having little vintage cards on my faux garden gate. It hangs above my desk in the kitchen.  It used to be a piece of lawn edging and had posts to  stick in the ground. I cut them off with a hack saw and hung it up. I got it at this time last year at Tuesday Morning.

I am crazy about the little mini clothes pins I used to attach the cards.

I dried some roses by hanging them upside down for a few weeks. 

I still love my chalkboard. I decorated it with sheet music hearts strung into a garland. I love all the vintage sheet music I have been seeing lately.

Can you see it says amoureux? Loving! How perfect is that? 

I got this in a stack of sheet music with our piano. 

I bought some cyclamen at my neighborhood nursery. I hope they will bloom the rest of the winter.  I just love the heart in the chair. The plants will be fine unless it gets below 25 degrees. They can go inside if it gets below that. With the way the weather has been, I'm afraid I won't need to. 

It feels like spring not Valentine's Day. I hope that we will still have some cold weather. I'm still having nightmares about our 72 days over 100 degrees last summer. I'm not ready for spring yet!

Sprinkled with Valentine bits,

Katie

Thank you for being patient as I play with the way the blog looks. I read that I was supposed to have a "test" blog first. I didn't know any of that. I'm learning a lot and having fun in the midst of the learning.
Linking with The house in the roses
andBetween Naps on the Porch
anddebbie-debbiedoos.blogspot
andMod Vintage Life