DIY VALENTINE'S DAY XOXO GARLAND

My creative juices have been flowing lately with the focus being on time-consuming things I can do with Little B while we're cooped up this winter, and this DIY Valentine's Day XOXO garland was the perfect afternoon activity. Side note: I don't know if it's his age or what but I remember last winter when he was 1.5, I felt like we needed to get out of the house at least once in the morning and once in the afternoon or else the house would be in full blown destruction mode, but lately he's been pretty good at chillin' inside with me and Grace. The day doesn't whiz by but I have to admit the colder temps have not been as brutal as I thought they would be this year with a toddler and baby at home. I'm actually kind of liking the time we have together inside our cozy house with no reason or motivation to go outside. I promise I'm not a hermit (though I feel like it somedays) and talk to me in a couple weeks, I'll probably be pulling out my hair, that's how these things seem to go...

SO, moving on, I thought it would be fun to invite our cousin over and make a fun decoration for Valentine's Day. Homemade decorations are so sweet, especially if you can involve your little friends, and along with a cute end-result, you also get to make some fun memories. Lately, Brian has been loving to get up on his stool and get busy in the kitchen so I thought it would be fun to make salt dough and use cookie cutters to cut out X's and O's and string them together to make garland. I bought the cookie cutter shapes and some gold and pink sprinkles on Amazon and started working on the dough.

It's super simple all you need to do is mix together:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
2/3 cup of water

It should be sticky so you may need to add more dry ingredients if you notice it won't be workable.

You roll the dough out to about 1/2 centimeter and start cutting out your shapes like this:

I made a fun Valentine's Day mocktail for my little friend Aubrey and served it my vintage champagne glasses : cranberry juice, sparking water and a raspberry :) 

Once we cut our shapes, we poked holes for the string through. We messed up on the X's at first, you need to put two holes in on the top instead of one so they lay flat. So we had X's with three holes instead of two, you win some you lose some. 

Next, we sprayed them with Elmers glue spray and sprinkled them with the pink and gold sugar sprinkles -- in hindsight, it might be better to use glitter but the sprinkles worked just as well. 

I baked them at 175 for about two hours and then left them out overnight before stringing them. I used waxed cotton cord as the ends don't fray so it's really easy to thread through the shapes. 

We hung it on our fireplace and I think it looks adorable, especially under our love print. 

We also JUST got this new fireplace screen which I'm obsessed with, as well as the sconces from Lamps Plus :) The LOVE print is one of my own, available on Pure Joy Paperie and I had it framed with an old frame my parents weren't using but you can find a similar one here :)

It's a sweet little craft that I think you'll have fun with, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to email me ;)