Valentine's Day 2023

Valentine’s Day arrived this year and my youngest son requested basketball-themed valentines for his school party. For the last few years we have strived to send non-food, non-candy, and allergen-free valentines for school parties, in support of my nephew who has a lot of food allergies, and this year was no exception.

I found these basketball pens on Amazon and they came in a pack of 24. Of course, we only needed 30, so I ordered two packs.

We headed to Pinterest for ideas for cute things to put on cards. And we’re suckers for a cute pun!

Next I made these simple basketball cards in Adobe Illustrator. The back just says “Love," and my kid’s name on the same basketball image. I printed them on my home printer onto card stock and cut them out with a 2.5 inch circle punch. The punch I have is Martha Stewart’s brand and it’s an awesome punch, but it’s been discontinues. Here is one from Fiskars that will work great. FYI, a 2.5 inch circle fits perfectly on a wide-mouth mason jar lid.

I attached each pen to a tag using some washi tape that I had to buy because I’m not a frequent user of washi tape. I found some food-themed tape on clearance at JoAnn’s.

In hindsight, I just should’ve used clear tape because at times the washi tape covered up some of the words.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost of this year’s valentines:

• basketball pens - $20.98/pack of 24

• washi tape - $5.99 for 8 rolls from JoAnn’s, on clearance

• card stock - already had

• printer - already had

At the end of the day, each valentine came to just under $1 each.

I have a love/hate relationship with printers. After owning and working with printers from Canon, Epson, Brother, Xerox, and HP, I always end up with HP because the print quality and color management has always proven to be closest to what I see on my calibrated monitor. Right now I have an HP Envy color inkjet printer. The print quality is okay, but nothing compared to a HP photo printer I had years ago (I STILL miss that printer). But ALL printers have their moments. Mine currently doesn’t want to connect to my desktop computer, it will only print from my phone. ::massive eye-roll:::

Here you can read about valentines I have created for previous years.

Does your family celebrate valentines day? If so, what traditions do you follow?

Lunar New Year 2023

Did you know that in some countries that celebrate the Lunar New Year, it lasts for about two weeks? Lots of businesses in China and Taiwan shut down completely during this time. This year's Lunar New Year celebrations, starting the Year of the Rabbit, will come to an end this weekend.

My MIL and my kids in 2016

San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade is pretty famous and it usually takes place at the end of the holiday. When my husband and I lived in California, we made a trip to Chinatown one year when our oldest son was a toddler to watch the parade in-person. It was a lot of fun! Since then, we make a point to try and find a broadcast of the parade online to watch as a family. This year will be no exception with the parade happening tomorrow evening, February 4th. 

My husband's family is from southern China, and these are some of the traditions that we've woven into our family. From what I have learned, these are similar among many Chinese families. 

It's tradition for folks to spend this time with their families; especially if they don't live close to them. It's considered lucky to wear red and there are lots of traditions one follows to ensure an auspicious new year. Many families do a thorough clearing of their home to sweep out any bad luck from the previous year. It's actually considered bad luck to clean your house, or cut your hair, on Lunar New Year's Day because you will sweep out any new good luck or cut your chances for a prosperous new year. 

My oldest not knowing what to do with his lucky money.

On Lunar New Year's Eve, families usually get together for a big dinner chocked full of dishes that represent positive aspirations for the new year. There is often steamed whole fish (prosperity), chicken (togetherness) or duck (loyalty), noodles (long life), and dumplings (wealth). It's not uncommon for families to come together to make dumplings for this meal. Deep fried spring rolls are also common because they look like little gold bars.

We sometimes have sweet desserts, but my in-laws have tried to teach my kids that oranges and tangerines (success & wealth) make a great dessert too. And they are luckier with the stem and leaves still attached. Some years, my mother-in-law has made sweet, deep-fried, sesame cookies called zhà má yè.    

Here’s a website that has some really wonderful Chinese recipes that are popular around the Lunar New Year.

This year my husband smoked a whole duck and my mother-in-law steamed a whole fish. We had sweet, sticky rice, that had diced char-siu (bbq pork), onions, ginger, and mushrooms. We had homemade bao (buns) to make little sandwiches with slices of the smoked duck, spring onion, and hoisin sauce; similar to Peking Duck.

Our Lunar New Year dinner this year

Of course, the part my kids most look forward to: Lucky Money! Pronounced lai see in Cantonese or hong bao in Mandarin. Traditionally children and unmarried adults receive red envelopes from parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles that contain money. Sometimes they have a "lucky" amount too. The number eight sounds very similar to "get rich" in Chinese, so it's considered a very lucky number. We've often seen dollar amounts given in eights ($8, $88, etc.).

My kids digging into their red envelopes in 2016, back when they were still cute!

My in-laws and my husband's aunts also give our kids red envelopes for their birthdays. My mother-in-law still gives my husband and me a red envelope at the Lunar New Year and on our birthdays too.

In celebration this year, I created a Lunar New Year cootie catcher. The symbolic items on there are pretty specific to many Chinese traditions. You can purchase and download a printable file from my Etsy shop.

Are you from a country that celebrates the Lunar New Year? If so, how do you traditionally celebrate? I would love to make a cootie catcher that is unique to how you celebrate. Are there different symbolic foods, items, or animals in Vietnam, Thailand, or Korea? Anywhere else? Please share!

Land Beyond Zion at Winter Break

Over winter break, my family spent the Christmas holiday with my sister and her family in southern California. We drove there from Salt Lake City. My husband was only able to take off one of the two weeks from work, so as we headed home from SoCal, we dropped him off at the St George Airport and stayed in the southern Utah area for a couple of days; specifically Land Beyond Zion.

Land Beyond Zion is a fun campground/vanlife spot right on the UT/AZ border. Shanti has built out a beautiful place to camp comfortably with flush toilets, running water, an outdoor shower and claw foot tub, WiFi, and a shared outdoor kitchen. It has multiple sleep options: from BYO tent, RV, or van with full hookups to a canvas platform tent (with heater!), an RV, or a tiny house. There’s a lovely spot with hammocks hung, and a play area for kids. She has plans to continue building more amenities and dogs are welcome!

Kicking myself for not taking photos of the structures she’s built; mostly on her own too!

My oldest with Shanti’s dog, Sunny

It’s 30 minutes from Hurricane and 50 minutes to Zion National Park. It’s 20 minutes from Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park. It’s super close to Gooseberry Mesa, about an hour to St George, and 90 minutes to Bryce Canyon National Park. It’s a wonderful basecamp to all kinds of outdoor exploration and adventures.

It actually rained most of the time we were there, so we did no hiking, but it was still fun and relaxing. We had no pressure to actually do anything… and we kind of didn’t. We played a competitive round of Phase 10, we chilled in hammocks, and we slept in; even thru an epic sunrise that Shanti was gracious enough to share a photo of.

One rainy afternoon, I attempted to paint that beautiful sunrise in watercolor and made a video of the process. You can view it here. At the end of the day, I couldn’t get my paints to make that peachy-pink sky (at least not at the vibrance I wanted, so I did another one after I got home in gouache. They’re very different, but I love both for different reasons.

As the rainstorms cleared and we headed home, we stopped at the Cinder Knoll trail in Hurricane to take photos of the Pine Valley Mountains with snow and Red Cliffs Desert Reserve in the foreground. The puddles were serendipitous.

Check out Land Beyond Zion on its own website, but also on AirBnB and HipCamp.

Shanti is hosting two retreats for adults this spring; one at the end of April that is hiking and running focused with Kathy Pugh. Click here for info about that retreat.

She’s hosting another at the end of May with amazing photographer Michelle Craig. Click here for info about the May retreat. If I didn’t have other stuff happening at the end of May, I’d be attending Michelle’s retreat!

Also… I love the logo I designed for Land Beyond Zion. It really turned out awesome. I’ll write a post about that on its own at some point.

Valentine's Day 2022

Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate! This is not a holiday we typically do anything for; feeling that’s it’s mostly driven by retail companies. That being said, creating fun valentines for school parties has become something I do look forward to each year.

This year my oldest son proclaimed “we don’t do valentines in middle school.” I rolled my eyes at him, but whatever.

At least my second grader still does valentines! We opted to go with non-food valentines again this year right when Sticker Mule was having a great sale on 3x3 inch holographic stickers. So he and I worked on a quick and fun design and I got them ordered. Have I mentioned that he loves bacon?

Next up was some kind of card to put the stickers on to give out at his party. We needed something for folks to know who these were from. I created a 4x5 inch card so I could print four on a page. I added a bacon border that matched the sticker and added his name. I had them printed and trimmed at my local Office Depot and they were ready within an hour.

I LOVE how these turned out! Here’s a breakdown of the pricing:

• 50 vinyl, holographic stickers, roughly 3x3 inch - on sale - $31.10 (incl tax, shipping was free)

• 12 pages printed on card stock (4 cards per page) and trimmed - $11.84

• double-sided tape (we already had some)

• Total: $42.94

That came out to $.89 cents per valentine for 48 valentines. There are only 25 kids in my son’s class, but he will also give one to his teacher, the class aides, specials teachers (music, PE, art, Spanish, etc), and the two administrative assistants. The minimum order for the deal on Sticker Mule was 50 stickers, so even if he only gave them out in his class, we’ll have leftover stickers to share with friends or I can list them in my sticker store for a few bucks.

Overall, this wasn’t crazy expensive and I love coming up with a fun way to do non-food, non-candy, allergen-free valentines.

April's Holiday Card - 2021

April’s holiday card for this past year was pretty awesome and I love how it turned out. She convinced her son to post in a bathrobe holding a soda can and I went to work in Photoshop to turn him into Uncle Eddie from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

I was able to include their two dogs in there as well and it was so much fun to work on. It was actually an interesting challenge to get the photos to match since any photos I could find of this scene from the film were quite grainy.

What a fun and hilarious idea for a holiday card, thank you, April!