I am so excited to report that our Gardening Workshop was a huge success!  
     If you remember, I told you about the grand plan to grow seedings as handouts and to have classes to teach people how to garden.  You can read about that here.  Right after Christmas, I started planting my seedlings and I continued to baby them over the next 2 months!  They were so beautiful.  Who knew you could become so attached to plants, but I did!  I learned so much and I was so thrilled thinking about people being able to grow something to feed their families!   The actual workshop far exceeded my wildest expectations, we had so many wonderful comments afterwards and such a great turnout to the workshop.  I'm going to tell you how we did it.  
     This is the type of activity that you need to start planning for a couple of months before planting season.  In Phoenix, the planting season is much earlier than most other places, so luckily, you can start to plan for your own workshop if you live in a place where the planting season is in April or May! 
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    Not long ago, I told you about how I'm involved in a Gardening Workshop for my church.  It will be happening this Saturday!  I have been growing transplants of various plants to give away to people so that they can go home and have the beginning of a garden!  You can read about it here.  
     Since writing that post, I've continued to learn and be amazed at the things someone who wants to garden can do to be successful without putting out a lot of money!  Getting hold of seeds to plant and grow has proven to be so easy, inexpensive and so rewarding for me that I decided that I have to let you in on some of my newly learned information.  

 Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, and what better way to show your love than by creating homemade chocolates? You may remember this post from ten years ago (wow! How long have we been blogging here?) where my mom showed you how to make Easter dipped chocolates and gave you our recipe for dipped chocolate filling. Well, now I'm going to show you how to make some tasty dipped chocolates using my mom's base recipe for the filling, but we are going to give them a Valentine Day design! (This is Lindsey by the way, and the humor of me doing something special for Valentine's day is funnier than you know.)

I am Young Women President in my ward, which means the young women in our church congregation between the ages of 12 and 18 are my responsibility. We plan activities together throughout the year from a weekly youth night to a summer camp. We recently held a fundraiser for our yearly summer camp and the girls chose to do a dessert silent auction. We decided to hold the auction the weekend before Valentine's Day, and so I decided I would make some dipped chocolates for my dessert for the auction! I wanted to make them look a little prettier than just little balls, so I used a silicone mold to shape the chocolates into cute shapes!

I decided to make two different fillings for these Valentine dipped chocolates, orange and thin mint. For the orange flavoring I followed the directions from my mom's post, which I included on the recipe card here. However, I had a container for Thin Mint crumbs in my cupcake cupboard so I just kept shaking out the thin mint crumbs, mixing them in, and doing a small taste test to see if you could taste the thin mint until it got to a taste I liked.
When it came to shaping the chocolates, there was a little trial and error for me. At first I thought it would be a good idea to shape the filling inside the mold and then do the chocolate bit. So here is what the shaped fillings looked like.

However, I learn that the easiest thing was to add a little of the melted chocolate to the bottom of the mold, then press in the filling and let them freeze. After letting them sit in the freezer for thirty minutes the dipped chocolates would pop right out of the mold and I would then dip the bottoms into the chocolate on the stove and placed them on a tray to put back into the freezer until the chocolate hardened.

I used two different dipping chocolate for these, Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate Melting Wafers, and Wilton's Milk Chocolate Candy Melts. (This Link is for the Light Cocoa Candy Melts, I couldn't find the milk Chocolate on Amazon.) I personally prefer the dark chocolate, the milk chocolate was too sweet for me, but you can use whatever chocolate you prefer!

These made about 4 dozen dipped chocolates. I bagged them in clear little baggies to display at the auction. The auction was a lot of fun and we raised a good amount of money for our summer camp! These chocolates are delicious and were a popular item that people bid on! I hope that you'll make some and enjoy!

     My grandson, Adrian, is turning 10 soon.  He is a smart, remarkable boy and I wanted to do something special for him for his birthday.  Alicia, his mom, told me that this year as they sat down as a family to make goals and vision boards, he decided that he wanted to work on learning to cook more.  Both of his parents love to cook, so he comes by it naturally.  Actually, he is already pretty good at cooking! 

      A few years ago, I made all of my granddaughters aprons.  (You can see the post here!)  Alicia told me that he wanted an apron, too.  But, I have not gotten around to making it.  When I heard about his goal, I figured this was the perfect time to do it!

      First I made him an apron in red cotton because red is his favorite color.  You can find boys apron patterns all over the internet.  I made my own pattern, but it looks like any you might find on Pinterest.  You could also simply buy a child's apron.  I'm still debating if I should put some sort of cool saying or something on the front pocket.  Any Ideas? 

      I put a pocket on the front chest of he apron, and a 3 section pocket that goes along the bottom of the apron.  I decided that I needed to fill the pockets with things for him to cook with.  The first thing I thought of was a little recipe book that I could create for him with some favorite recipes from me or our family. 

     Here is how I created it! 

     I used Canva to create the recipe cards.  Many of my favorites are already in card form on our blog, so I simply had to choose recipes that I thought Adrian would love.  I think that is the great part about this gift idea, the personalization!  Adrian is not a big sweet eater, he loves crunchy snacks and if he has dessert, he likes chocolate.  He also likes vegetables and out of the ordinary savory recipes that you don't hear most 10 year olds liking! So, choosing recipes for him was a lot of fun! 

        After choosing the recipes, I printed them as 4x6 recipe cards on cardstock.  When I cut them out, I left a margin at the top to accommodate the rings for the booklet. 
     I have a binding machine that uses those plastic rings that I haven't used very often yet,  but this was the perfect application.  I may need to curate more of these little booklets for more people in my life! 
       I designed a front cover and I am linking the pdfs here for you if you would like to create your own booklets.  I made one for boys and one for girls.  All you have to do is click on them! 

     All you have to do is print off your favorite recipes to share with your grandchild.  Or, if you would like, you can always find recipes that you think they would like on the internet or right on our blog! We have a bunch of cards to choose from in a wide variety of flavors and tastes.  Type what you are looking for in the search bar and see if we have a recipe for it!
     Another option is to handwrite some recipes so that they will have your handwritten recipes to treasure! 
      If you have a laminating machine  or simply clear contact paper, that would be a good idea to use on all of the pages, or at least the cover of the booklet so that it can be wiped clean. 
​​​     If you don't have a binding machine, (they are pretty reasonable) You could use binder rings or even staples if that is all you have.  You could even stitch it together with string or ribbon!  Just be sure to leave that margin at the top so you don't cut off words or directions with the binding.

     I like the 4x6 size because it will fit perfectly in one of the pockets.

     Now I'm finding other items to tuck into the pockets.

     Here are my ideas so far:

• a wooden spoon that I personalized with wood burning
• an oven mitt
• gloves to protect against cuts
• Some cash to help him by ingredients!

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     Have any other ideas?  Let me know in the comments before I mail this package off!  Also, your ideas for the front pocket, or should I leave it plain?

     I worried that he would be disappointed by my gift because my other 10 year old grandson would rather have Legos, but Alicia assures me that Adrian will love it.  He is quite a well rounded boy who likes Legos, basketball, Pokémon, and cooking! That is pretty cool I think! 
      I have a feeling that a few of my other grandchildren would enjoy a personalized gift of recipes from me as well.  Each set will be different, depending on their tastes!  Hopefully they will realize the love I put into the gift as I show that I know and appreciate each one of them.  
​     I hope you like this idea, too!