Chocolate Dipped Cinnamon Bears

Yummy treat... cinnamon bears. Their chewy cinnamonny sweetness! Awesome!
What could make them better? Ummm... duh! Chocolate! That brown gooey goodness makes everything better. The kids and I spent an hour or so making these little gifts for their school teacher.

Start with melted chocolate and a bag of cinnamon bears. You can melt the chocolate in a double boiler or an easier way is to do it in the microwave. Chocolate can burn easily so it is best to reduce the power of the microwave. Of course all microwaves are a little bit different so keep a close eye on the chocolate if it's the first time. I will microwave the chocolate for about a minute at a time at 60-70% power, stirring in between each interval. Then when most of chocolate is melted, I like to pull it out and stir it until the last few lumps melt so that the chocolate doesn't get tooo hot. When it's all ready, toss one of the bears into the melted chocolate bath.

Cover the bear up with a fork. Pick it up and tap it on the edge of the bowl and let the excess chococlate drip off back into the bowl.

Slide the bear off the fork onto a piece of parchment paper. Check to make sure that on the side where the bear slid off the fork it is covered up with chocolate.

The proceed to cover each little bear, one after another...

After all the bears had been dipped, for some fun I put the leftover chocolate into a pastry bag and drizzled it onto some of the bears. You could use a contrasting colored chocolate, white or some Wilton melts in any color to suit the holiday. This was just an easy way to add more chocolate to the bears.

I thought about only doing half the bear... but that was just crazy. Every part of the bear wants to be covered in the silky warm chocolate. It wouldn't be fair to leave out half of the bear.

After the bears take their warm chocolatly bath, it was time to let the bears cool off in a cool place (such as a refrigerator).... and then when the chocolate gets hard and set... you now it is time for the party in your mouth to begin! Mmmm.....

I put some chocolate covered cinnamon bears into the bag and then mixed them up with some plain cinnamon bears. I wasn't sure the teachers position on cinnamon bears. I thought... this way they'd have a choice... some with chocolate and some without.

I made a hand written tag using the Sale A Bration Stampin' Up set, which included the cellophane bags, the long striped tags the hexagon tags and the glittery heart stickers.

Valentine Boxes

Our School Valentine boxes this year... Jared picked making a purple minion and Samantha decided to make her own Olaf box. The openings for the valentines & treats to enter the box is the mouth on both boxes.

Making the boxes...

It was pretty simple to make the boxes. We just used an empty 12 can soda box. We put packing tape over the openings (the one to carry the box & also the corner one where the soda comes out) so the box would be flat and easier to cover with paper. It took about 4 sheets of 8 1/2 x 11 inch papers to cover the box & they overlapped on the sides. We just used hot glue to hold the paper onto the box because it would dry quickly and hold strong. Once the boxes were covered, we were ready to embellish them.

Embellishing the boxes...

For the Purple Minion, we started by covering the bottom with some black to make the overalls. Two one-inch strips were put in the front and around to the back for the straps of the overalls. Next we moved to the top of the Minion. I cut strips of paper 3/4 to 1 inch wide, from 3 different shades of purple. Then we crimped the strips quickly and randomly by hand and covered the top of the box with the folded strips to make the Minions crazy hair.

Next it was time to add the eye. A stripe of black paper around the top that was about 2 1/2 inches big. I used a silver mason jar rim as the goggle. Then we put a circle piece of clear window sheets (from Stampin' Up). Punched a white circle that would fit the eye goggle and that was the back of the eye, followed by a black pupil and a purple half circle for the eyelid.

Last it was time to make the mouth. Using a craft knife, we cut the half circle for the mouth and then used white paper and cut out crooked teeth and glued those on.

Done! Ready to fill with many treats!

Olaf: Samantha basically made this on her own. After I covered the box, she used white cardstock to cut out pieces of Olaf's body. Black paper for the buttons and mouth. Brown paper for the stick arms, eyebrows, and crazy hair on top. She used a sharpie to draw on the face and a piece of orange paper for the carrot nose. After the face was drawn on, her Daddy cut out the mouth spot so that her Valentines would make it safely into the box. She put a square piece of paper into the mouth and glued it to the inside of the box, only on the top edge. This was to make sure the mouth was dark. She did an amazing job on it.