We had a grand time this year prepping for Valentine's. I nearly forgot to share what we did. I found a gigantic bag of (my favorite) Hi-Chews at the grocery store a month ago, so I knew immediately I wanted to do something punny with those. So here we are. The kids love these things (I had to buy a second back of Hi-Chews just to finish all the valentine's because a bunch may or may not have been eaten many weeks before the fact. I found little 3"x3" zip closure baggies at my local Pak 'N Wrap. You can find these just as easy at papermart.com. I just didn't want to wait for shipping. I wrote out the little phrase, printed and cut these little fold-over cards and stapled them together. Mega easy. Penelope designed and I made a stamp so she could own her valentine's day treats. Felix even helped putting them together! I love when I can include both of them on the fun! I know it's too late for 2016 Valentine's, but I figure I'd share this printable for anyone looking to use this idea in the future. See the link below to download the printable.

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*By downloading the above material, you agree to terms of use: This tutorial/freebie is free for personal use and should not be distributed/republished without my consent. Altering any files is NOT ALLOWED. If you would like to use this freebie for commercial purposes, please email me. Thanks!

This post is sponsored by Leather Hide Store. Find a massive variety of high quality upholstery-weight leather at a great price. Connect with Leather Hide store on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. See their upholstery guide here. I've had this seat for gosh nearly 3 years. It's been patiently awaiting a loving touch in the corner of my studio. For the life of me I can't find a before picture, but it's not too terribly hard to imagine: dark oak legs and a 70s poo brown tweed cover over the seat cushions. It's a simple silhouette. And for being so old and well-used (it was formerly a chair on BYU campus), it was in fabulous condition. A few scuffs and scrapes on the legs and a whole lot of dust. Sitting on it was a dusty, scratchy experience. I felt like it could be easily elevated out of its sad state with a little bit of paint and leather. Unfortunately for everyone, it took a year to attack the upholstery once I started to take it apart. It wasn't that the upholstery work was terribly difficult. In fact, once I started the job, it wasn't hard at all. The square shape of the upholstery made drafting up a pattern for the new cover super easy. And it didn't take up a ton of material either. I don't think I had more than 1/4th of a hide here and I had just enough to cover the entire thing. The hardest part about the upholstery job was that Felix put a bolt inside one of the holes sideways (how he got it in there, I have no idea) so I spent a good hour working on getting it out. I split a small part of the wood getting the legs on (see the above pic), but overall, it came together quite nicely. Putting the back panel of leather on was the most terrifying thing because I had to measure so precisely, account for the stretch of leather and use the most deadly upholstery tacks to nail into the frame so there are no raw edges. I'm sure those tacks were meant to go only through fabric, so it was a bit tough to get them to go through 2, sometimes 4, layers of 2 oz. leather. Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out. I think it looks nicely finished, and guests aren't afraid to sit in the chair anymore! It also adds a lot of lightness to that corner of our living/family room. The old chair blended right in to the dark wood flooring. Materials used:

• 2 oz. Natural finish leather (this is the closest I can find to what I got)
• Upholstery tacks
• Rubber mallet
• Nail gun
• BB Frösch chalk paint
• Sewing machine

Here's a run-down of the process: I took off the legs, measured the seat and drafted up flat paper patterns of the seat. I used a 5/8 seam allowance and made sure to write out the SA on every pattern piece. After the patterns were done and checked against the existing chair, I cut out the leather. Since there were a lot of squares, each pattern piece was labeled and the leather was clipped to the pattern pieces until I sewed them so I could leave and come back to the project and know what pieces were sewed together and where. From there, I got a bit freaked out about the sewing aspect of it all and switched to finishing the legs. I used BB Frösch chalk paint for the legs, which was a huge time saver. No sanding or priming required. Just paint and go! The matte finish is pretty great, too. It makes me wish this had been around when we did our rocking chair eeons ago! After I got the legs done, I (with the help of my intern last year) removed the prior upholstery. I wish we had done this outside because dust, old fabric fibers and countless number of staples just sprinkled my studio floor for weeks. Even now I still find a random staple. This chair had hundreds of hundreds of staples keeping the material on the frame! The dusty fabric made my studio smell horribly for days. I sewed up the seams on the sides of each section (the top and bottom cushions are two separate pieces) and fit the leather on. I didn't have to make any adjustments to the fit, thankfully, but I realized I needed to reinforce the ends of the seams so that they wouldn't come undone. I grabbed my waxed linen thread for that and sewed up those ends for strength. Once I got the top and bottom cushions done, I affixed the legs, attached the back portion and then covered the bottom. I cleaned everything up and conditioned with leather conditioner and voila! It took me several months to complete it, but if I had worked continuously on the project, it wouldn't have taken me longer than a Saturday morning and afternoon. I just got nervous about each step so I would take long breaks.   So there you have it! Read more for details on the living room! The living room has been a fun one to work on over the last few years. I still don't consider it "done". There's still more work I want to do with the opposite side of the room (the leather couch doesn't look good there) and I have buckets of art I need to frame on the walls, but I'm getting there! I've had fun collecting little ampersands here and there. The dark metal one and the white one with lights are from Michael's (recently) and the gold wooden one is from a Christmas gift exchange. The peace sign is from a white elephant exchange (seriously, too cool) and the octopus is from Amazon. The air plant arrangement is from MakersKit, the deer shed is from Liz Bryson and I made the linocut in 10th grade art class. Super random, but I thought it worked well there. You can see in the reflection of the TV the ugly broom that's just out of the frame just so you know my house doesn't look like this on the regular. I styled it just for taking these pics. Just keeping it real here. The book shelves are from the Container Store. They're cool because the shelves are easily adjusted to different heights. It's great with curious little hands so low. But I try to keep the bottom shelves stocked with a small assortment of toys and books anyway. The lamp is from Target (although, I think I'm ready for something new and a little more angular and a little less top-heavy), the artwork is chalk stuff I did a while ago, the elk shed is from Liz Bryson (again), the teepee is from Land of Nod and the plaster masks are what Chris and I made when we were first dating. I think I would have opted for something a little more built-in in this area of our house, but Chris pivots the TV and console to watch while he's cooking his meals or cleaning the kitchen. Oh, and did I mention that Chris typically cleans the kitchen? He does. I'm one lucky, lucky lady. I'm working on polishing up other parts of the house to share with you soon! Everything is SO CLOSE! Stay tuned!    

This is one of those things that sounds kind of gross, but seriously, stay with me. It's my new favorite salad. Don't get me wrong, I thought sardines were a sour, strong-tasting/smelling canned fish, when really it's like a salted tuna. When looking for sardines at the grocery store, make sure you get a container with boneless skinless sardines. Some packages will have the fish with the bones still in there. That can get a little tricky to eat.

Sardine Margherita Salad

• Arugula
• Baby kale
• Tomatoes (I love Valagio Marzanos from TJ's, but any kind of cherry tomato will work great)
• Mozzarella pearls
• 1 can sardines (boneless, skinless)
• Sriracha
• Parmesan
• Fresh Basil

Blend half arugula and half baby kale. You can go for one or the other, but I find the kale gives the salad body and the arugula gives the salad some depth with its nuttiness. Slice tomatoes in half or fourths. Sprinkle tomatoes, mozzarella and sardines. Add some sriracha (like 5-7 drops for a personal salad) and dressing, then toss. Garnish with parmesan and basil, serve. The heat of the sriracha and the acidity of the dressing breaks down the kale nicely so there's less bitterness in the leaf.

Mandarine & Sage Dressing

• 1/2 cup rice vinegar
• 3/4 cup sesame oil
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 5-7 fresh sage leaves
• juice of 2 mandarine oranges
• 1/4 teaspoon cracked pepper
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Add ingredients to a blender and puree. Add salt, pepper and even a little sugar as needed.

Valentine's Day is just around the corner! I swear it was just Thanksgiving. This time of year just flies right on by. I'm teaming up with Silhouette (my favorite, as you know) to provide you with some fun printables in time for Valentine's Day! The Silhouette Mint is one of my favorite new gadgets of all time. I can create a stamp in minutes. Literally. If you haven't seen my youtube video on the process check it out here. It's super slick, which makes card making, gift giving and label making so much more fun and customized. I wrote out a few little sayings and drew up a little banner. All these things are available to download free at the bottom of this post. If you don't have a Mint, no problems. Feel free to use the graphics for personal use. This Wednesday, we had an intimate gathering to learn calligraphy and make Valentines. I wanted to allow these awesome people to use their freshly gained calligraphy skills, but also give them the opportunity to put calligraphy on something if they didn't feel comfortable writing something out. Each guest got a calligraphy kit and a card making kit with card stock (Thanks to my favorite My Mind's Eye peeps! We used the dark grey from this line.) and piles and piles of stickers, washi tape and stamps for everyone to deck out their cards to the gills. Because a gaudy valentine is an awesome valentine. Totally channeling my inner Schin Loong. These little stamps are so fun to use. See below for what size stamps I used for each design.

• banner: 90x45 mm
• Be Mine: 30x30 mm (on the diagonal)
• You're Hot: 30x30 mm
• I Freaking Love You: 15x60 mm

If you're interested in purchasing the Mint. Use code: MELISSA for $20 off a Mint machine! Wouldn't it be so darling to have your kid design their own Valentine's card? So adorable. Click the link to read more about the workshop and download the free artwork. The workshop on Wednesday was so fun. We hit an unexpected road bump with the venue, so ended up relocating to the K2 Realty offices in Suncrest (tip top of the mountains in Utah, no one knows realty in Suncrest like K2!). It sounds weird to have an event like this in an office, but they rent out their space for all sorts of functions (weddings, family gatherings, etc) and the venue can't be beat. It's cozy, beautifully decorated and the windows perfectly frame the Wasatch mountains. With all this snow, the sunset was spectacular. My mom snapped the below photo from her phone. The arrangements were simple and fun. Any excuse to buy flowers is a great excuse in my book. And for the name tags, I cut out hearts (with my Silhouette Cameo) and propped them up with over-sized clothes pins (Michael's - $1.50! GO GET SOME!). Here's an in-action shot (thanks Mom!) of me teaching upside-down. I love these candid shots. We had so much fun. I'm so thrilled we had such a great group.

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Click the link above to download the stamp artwork. All artwork is available for PERSONAL USE ONLY. If you'd like to use the graphics for your business or any commercial work, please email me. We'll work something out. Printable includes JPG files of hand-lettered "Be Mine", "XOXO", "I freaking love you", "You're hot" and "Netflix & Chill". I hope you enjoy them and put them to good use! Send me links of what you've done with the artwork, I'd love to see! Are you interested in learning how to write beautifully with brush markers? Check out my online class right here. Looking to buy some fun markers before you try the class? Here's a list of my favorites (I have all of these in my collection and I love each one!).    

In the very first cooking class I attended from Tom (he's the best!) he taught us how to make a rustic tomato sauce. It's my go-to. I don't buy store bought anymore. Best of all, no can opener required. I've never been a huge fan of the overly-acidic, dump-all-your-food-storage-into-a-pot sauces. They don't taste like a real tomato grown on a vine. This sauce does. And you don't have to make it at the height of growing season, either. I can make mine in the middle of winter with 72" of snow piling in our front yard. The secret is in the type of tomatoes. Regular cherry tomatoes work fabulously. If you happen to find yourself near a Trader Joe's, stock up on ALL of their mini tomatoes, especially their Villagio Marzano tomatoes! OMG, so good just plain. This recipe may feel like it's more work than the typical recipe that calls for cans and Italian seasoning, but this gets more of a rustic, home-grown tomato taste rather than a canned taste. It's just so. much. better.

RUSTIC TOMATO SAUCE

Adapted from Food Made By Tom | Makes 2-3 cups

• 4 cloves garlic
• 2 tbs salted butter
• 1/3 cup coarsely sliced onion
• 2 cartons grape tomatoes*
• 1/2 cup chicken stock or broth
• kosher salt to taste

Peel garlic and coarsely chop. Turn on the stove to medium high heat. Add butter, garlic and onion. While the onion and garlic are simmering, slice all of your tomatoes in half. Dump tomatoes into the pot once the onions and garlic is aromatic (until onion goes clear, you can go until it browns a little if you'd like). Cover and cook for 30-40 minutes. Check in on it and stir about once every 5 minutes. You'll want the bottom of the medium sauce pan to burn just slightly so you get a roasted flavor in there. Timing depends upon how juicy your tomatoes are. Add salt and pepper. Add broth. I eyeball it. Uncover the sauce and reduce at medium-high heat. At this point you could just remove from heat and put on pizza dough as a rustic pizza sauce. My kids don't much care for the larger skins, so I'll allow the mixture to cool and blend it with my immersion blender or I'll put it in the blender and puree. Garnish with fresh basil. The above image is when it's about half-way done. You'll want a soupier consistency. It'll start bubbling and burning slightly on the bottom. The charred bottom adds a lot of flavor, as if you roasted the tomatoes in an oven. You can add broth or stock to the sauce or leave as-is. It just depends upon how thick you want your sauce to be and how much time you have to let it reduce. If I have time, I'll add broth and let it reduce a couple of times so the flavor is concentrated. My best batches tend to be the ones I forget about because I get caught up with the drama of after-school studies or who gets the iPad. It's best to cook at medium to medium/high heat. I tend to go medium/high heat because we're at altitude. Things take FOREVER to cook otherwise. So this may not be a hard-and-fast recipe, it's more recipe theory and based on "Looks", so I hope it'll be as good for you as it has been for our family.