Last Thursday, my dear girl friends and I met up for a Girl’s Night!  We try to meet up at least once a month so we can talk about all the things the boys couldn’t care less about.  It’s a great time to catch up on everyone’s lives, laugh, and give advice.  Usually we’ll go out for happy hour but this time we decided to go to one’s house and cook, drink and let our creative juices flow!  And since Valentine’s Day is coming up, we decided make “heart” and “love” related crafts!  So here you have it… a tutorial on how to have a successful Girl’s Craft Night!

Ingredients
The obvious…a group of two or more girls
Bridal, home & garden, and celebrity gossip magazines
Martha Stewart Crafts premade boxes or material to make your own box
As many scrapbooking materials as you all can muster up, such as stickers, scrapbook paper, ribbon, etc.
Scissors, tape, glue stick, toothpicks
Frosting, powdered sugar
And of course, desserts for decorating!  (Examples: brownies, red velvet cupcakes)

A poison of your choice: Wine or ZEVIA zero calorie Cola (This was the first time I heard about this natural, amazing tasting pop product that really takes like other pops, or soda for you people living on the coasts.  Here’s a little spiel from their website: ZEVIA contains none of the chemically processed artificial sugar substitutes, artificial flavors or artificial colors found in other diet sodas. ZEVIA is all-natural, has zero calories, zero net carbs, zero fat, and little or no sodium. It uses a natural sweetener called Stevia which I still need to buy and substitute in recipes that call for sugar!  You can buy ZEVIA at your local organic or health food store or I even found it on Amazon.  They have Cola, Ginger Ale, Twist, Orange, Root Beer, and Black Cherry flavors… maybe I will try them all and do a review post on them… OK sorry, I digressed.)

And the result of everything above mixed together… Drum roll please…..

Craft #1 – Decorated Red Velvet Cupcakes with Hearts on top

Heart decorating ideas:
Inverted powdered sugar heart
Strawberry hearts on cream cheese frosting
Strawberry hearts + bow on cream cheese frosting
Sticker hearts on toothpick on cream cheese frosting
Brownie hearts on cream cheese frosting

Craft #2 – Boxed heart-to-heart conversation text twist brownies

Directions
– Bake brownies from scratch or from box, whichever you desire
– Cut out brownies into small heart shapes
– Think of 6-8 letters that either define your relationship, is a nickname for your significant other, or describes your emotions about your love and use frosting to pipe one letter on each brownie heart (Examples: SWEET <3 , UR MINES, SMITTEN!, POOH BEAR, SNUGGLES)
*I made one 9x13inch batch of brownies the day before and was able to cut out 40 brownie hearts for 5 girls to use, hence why I had to limit the girls to 8 letters max.  Some were eaten before we got to crafting, but by those who shall remain nameless haha.*
– Decorate box with hearts, magazine cut out letters, stickers, scrapbook paper, ribbons, bows, love notes, poems, etc.
– Scramble brownie heart letters when placing in box
– When you give your box to your significant other, have them guess what the brownie hearts spell out!  (I think we had about a 60% success rate with this one haha).

And last but not least, you may want to hire a photographer (or just rope in one of the husbands) to capture all of the precious moments!  All pictures in this post are courtesy of Matt at Paralyzed Horizon Imaging.  Thanks again!

If you had a max of 8 letters to describe your significant other or relationship, what would you say?