Heart Shaped Pretzels

We wanted to make pretzels the other day and they managed to become Heart shapes along with other shapes and letters. These pretzels would be perfect for a Valentine's day treat or just to say I love you. This recipe is one my daughter did in school so it is a very doable process to get your kids involved. Keep reading to find out how we made Our Heart Shaped Pretzels.

Ingredients Needed for Pretzels:
1 Package Yeast
4 cups of flour
2 cups warm water
1 egg white
1 TBS. Sugar
1 + TBS Salt
Cookie sheets
Foil

-In a big bowl, mix together, yeast, water, sugar, and salt.

-Stir in flour.

-Knead dough on floured  table until dough is smooth. Add more flour if too sticky.

-Line cookie sheets with foil and spray with oil.

-Shape dough into Hearts or whatever shape you choose.  We did letters too.

-Brush pretzels with egg white and sprinkle with salt

****For Cinnamon Variety,  brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. 

-Bake in oven set at 425 F for 15 minutes or until browned.

-Enjoy!

As you can see we made some of the pretzels into letter shapes and traditional pretzel shapes.

These are really YUMMY!
(We've been nibbling on them all week for breakfast and for treats!)

Celery Printed Rose Valentines

We made printed roses from the bottom ends of celery stalks.  I think these turned out so lovely.  I've been wanting to try this for ages and finally did. Keep reading to see how we made these Celery Rose Printed Valentines.

To Create Roses from Celery you'll need:

Bottom ends of celery stalk cut off

Dish or paper plate for paint

Red, Pink, and Green tempera paint

Pink and White Construction Paper (any color you choose!)

scissors

First cut off the bottom ends of celery stalks as straight as you can to make a good printing surface. We only had small stalks, but you could use larger stalks for bigger roses too.

Prepare your paper,  cut hearts, use folded paper to create cards, or use plain paper too.

 Get your paint ready on a paper plate or dish and smooth out to print more easily.

Then print however you like.  I like the more random look to create overlapping rose shapes.

We added other cut out hearts to frame and accent the hears.  You can also use green paint for leaf accents on the roses too.

I think we'll be doing more of these. Please share your results with this process.  

Happy Valentine's Day!

Science Experiment: Borax Crystal Hearts

This is fun experiment with very cool results.  Our inspiration was from The Scientific Mom.  She created Borax Crystal Ornaments as part of her 12 Days of Science Series with her daughter.  Be sure to check out her blog here to find out about all the amazing excursions and experiments that she does with her daughter.  We decided to make borax crystal hearts for Valentine's day and a few snowflakes for Winter.  Keep reading to find out how we made these.

To make Borax Crystal Hearts You'll Need:

Pipe Cleaners

20 Mule Team Borax (found in the laundry section  of the grocery store) (5-6 Tablespoons or more)
***Borax is not-edible and should be handled with care when using with children)

Water (2 Cups or so)

Jar or Glass Container

Pencil or stick

The first step in making these is to shape a pipe cleaner into a the shape you desire.  Make sure to form a hanger or add one to the shape using the pipe cleaner. Then boil about 2 cups of water (depends on how big your glass container is), let cool a little and pour into your glass container. Then, take about 6 Tablespoons of Borax and stir into the water until dissolved.  Then hang your pipe cleaner shape from a pencil. Place the pencil on top of the glass container.  Make sure it is submerged.

You can add more Borax which will create more crystals.  Let this sit over night, and the next morning  you'll have beautiful crystal shapes. ***Keep the pipe cleaner submerged over night! It was fun to experiment and check them the next morning.  Here are some of our results:

Close-up Crystals

Red Metallic Heart

Silver Pipe Cleaner Snowflake

Swirls

We had a lot of fun experimenting with this idea. We tried adding food color, but the colorful pipe cleaners really brought out the color too.  Have fun with this experiment and let me know your results!

Dancing Candy Hearts Experiment

Do you have any left over candy hearts from Valentine's day? Well,  I have just the experiment that you can do with candy hearts that my daughter has been going crazy about the past few days.

Materials Needed:

Candy Hearts

Clear jar

1 cup of water

2 Tablespoons of baking soda 

about a 1/2 cup or more of vinegar

First, fill a small clear jar with about a cup of water.  Then put 2 Tablespoons of baking soda and stir.

After that,  put about 2 or 3 candy hearts in the mixture.  They will just sit at the bottom of the jar at first.

Then add the vinegar and the hearts will begin to dance or rise and fall! C was really excited how they were dancing!

We stirred them around to help the hearts move about.  Essentially the baking soda and vinegar are reacting to create carbon dioxide and bubbles and lifting the hearts up. In the end, the candy hearts just stayed at the top, but C had fun experimenting with adding more baking soda or vinegar to see if it they would dance or move more. This occupied her for a long time!

Happy Heart Experimenting!

Does Your Child Keep a Sketchbook?

My daughter has had a sketchbook before, but I was excited to see some of her drawings that she recently did in her new book.  I gave her no instruction so I was really impressed.  She usually will draw things from her imagination, but she chose to draw things around the house.  I wanted to share her wonderful drawings. Let me know what you think.


Here is her sketch of our Valentine Teapot that we have had forever and that she has always been enamored with.  It was so cool to see that she sketched it.

Here is a sketch that C made of my husband's plastic heart gear that he ordered online.  It was created by a 3-D printer which is something my husband has been obsessed with.  Obviously my daughter finds it just as fascinating or she wouldn't have sketched it.  The gears actually work on the heart too. SO fun!

Lastly, here is my daughter's sketch of The Snowy Day DVD cover.  She has loved this book and movie since she could walk. It just happened to be out because she told me that the snow reminded her of Peter and the Snowy Day and she wanted to see the DVD and book.  That book will always have a special place in our hearts here.

I can't wait to see what else my daughter will sketch in her new sketchbook!

Bubble Printed Valentine Hearts

My all time most popular post on the The Chocolate Muffin Tree is Bubble Printing and we revisited this technique just recently to create some Valentine Hearts. They turned out beautifully.

Materials Needed:
(Per color you need)
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoons tempera paint
few squirts of dish soap
containers
straws
paper

We made Bubble Prints in this post here if you want to follow the tutorial with pictures. Basically you mix up the ingredients above in each container per each color. Then you blow into the mixture like you were blowing bubbles in milk (watch that little ones don't suck up the soapy mixture) and place a paper over the colored bubbles to create a print. The print is created as the bubbles pop. Each time you'll need to blow more bubbles to create more prints.

After you have a bunch of bubble printed papers, you can use them to create heart shapes.  We used construction paper in Valentine colors to frame our hearts. You could make these hearts into Greeting Cards or even Heart Garland.

Happy Bubble Printing and Happy Hearts Day!

Sweet Little Heart Cookies

We've made this recipe the past few years from Family Fun Magazine as Santa Hats, but since we forgot to make them for Christmas I told my daughter we could make a heart version of these for a Valentine Heart Cookie. They are basically a Meringue Cookie made with egg whites and sugar. Here is how they turned out:

Ingredients Needed:
2 egg whites, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
Red colored sugar
parchment paper

First heat the oven to 200 degrees F.  Then beat the egg whites until soft peaks form.  After that, add the cream of tartar, vanilla extract, and 1/2 sugar. Continue to beat until peaks stiffen.  Then we put the mixture into a gallon size plastic bag and cut a corner off the bag for a makeshift piping bag.

Then on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, pipe the hearts with the bag filled with the egg white mixture.

Next, fill the inside of the heart like this.

Here is C hard at work in the process.

Lastly, sprinkle the colored sugar on the hearts and cook for 1 hour and 20 minutes at 200 degrees F. Cook them until they are hard, but not browned. The recipe advised to turn off the oven and let the cookies sit for an hour before removing. ***We took them right out and they were fine.

My daughter loves these sweet cookies and we already need to make some more!

Shaving Cream Marbled Valentine Hearts

I absolutely LOVE this process and have done it many times, but never did a post about it.....so here it  is! We made Marbled Valentine Hearts with shaving cream! Here are some of our beauties.  We put them on a string/yarn as a decoration to hang vertically or as a garland!

To create marbled papers of any kind you need:

Shaving Cream/foam

a tray of some kind

Water colors or food coloring + water

brushes/eye droppers

sticks of any kind or combs

paper

a plastic lid cut in half or piece of cardboard

To begin,  spread shaving cream in a tray and flatten the top a bit like this.  About an inch deep of shaving cream.

Now drip watered down paint or food coloring with a paint brush or eye dropper on the surface of the shaving cream.

Then,  take a stick or comb and swirl around the paint to create zig zags, curvy lines, or whatever you choose.

Then lay down a paper on the marbled shaving cream.

Lift up the paper and you'll have something like this! (not finished yet)

Now take a straight edged piece of plastic or piece of cardboard (we used a plastic lid cut in half), and scrape the shaving cream off the heart. Messy!

Under the shaving cream layer will reveal a GORGEOUS marbled effect! Let them dry for a few hours.

Then we glued them on colored paper to frame them.  Here is a close up of one of my favorite marbled hearts.

Here are bunches of our marbled shaving cream hearts! Love them all!

After we made bunches of hearts C just wanted to play in the shaving cream which is always a FAVORITE!

We've had fun with shaving cream in these posts too:

Super Easy Shaving Cream Bathtub Paint

Shaving Cream Cloud Paint

This post is linked to: Link and Learn, Craft Schooling Sunday, Learn Through Play Monday