Chocolate Covered Lady Bug Valentines Free Printable

Valentine's day is tomorrow!!! Every year, Ryan creates a heart shaped meal for us and keeps it as a surprise!! I'm so excited to see what he comes up with this year!!

Anyway, this is Ansley's first Valentine's Day which I think she'll sort of have an idea of what's going on. With Aubrey's class treats out of the way, I had to think of something else creative for her. And it had to be easy.

Okay, I didn't think of it. I pinterest'ed it. (Is pinterest'ed a word?). Lady bug with a cute saying: I'm gonna BUG you until you're my valentine!!

The lady bugs themselves were SUPER easy to do. You just need about two 45 minute intervals in terms of time (I know how precious time can be for momma's with babies).

Here's what you need:

2 bags of chocolate melts in red (found these at Michael's)
2 bags of chocolate melts in brown or black (found these at Michael's)
2 bags of large pretzels (I found them by the chip aisle at Wal-mart)
2 packages of eyes (found these at Michael's)
Wax paper
a small bowl that is narrow enough to dip chocolate on both sides of the pretzel
a larger bowl that can fit the small bowl
pot of water

Here's what you need for packaging it up:

Time:

45 minutes each day for 2 days from when you want the candy done OR
if you have 3 hours, you could do it that way too
(you just need time between the color dipping to let the initial color dry)
I did it over the span of 2 days (since Valentine's Day fell on a Friday and the girls' needed it during a work week).

1. Buy your materials

2. Separate out your "good pretzels" from the bad broken pretzels. With the first bag, more than half of my pretzels were broken. With the second bag, I had a better batch.

First bag: (good on left, bad on right)

Second bag: (good on left, bad on right)

2. Start boiling water.

3. Follow the directions on the red chocolate melt bag. Note: I've read multiple places not to follow the directions on the bag because the melts turned out terrible. I didn't find this to be the case at all. I put the chocolate melts (one bag at a time) and put the microwave at a power of 50% and let it go for 1.5 minutes, then checked/stirred it, then went again for 30 seconds.

Notice the bowl I put it in. It's almost overflowing with the chocolate for a reason:

4. Take the large bowl, and put boiling water into the bowl. Then take the bowl of melted chcocolate and place the bowl inside the large bowl. This will help the chocolate stay melted as you are working with it.

5. Dip the top half (heart section) and put it on the wax paper. Let it dry for a few hours, or leave it over night like I did:

6. A few hours later (or next morning before the babies wake up), repeat 3-5. Add the eyes on the pretzels prior to the chocolate drying.

7. Here's what the phrase is for the treat. Isn't it cute?

8. Package it up:

9. Give a sample to babies who have been waiting very patiently during the packaging process:

10. Try some yourself and then have your husband take a picture of you with the wide angle camera lens so that your face and nose looks bigger than it really is.

11. Then take a picture of your final product that you'll send off with the kids to daycare. And remind yourself to remind the girls when they grow up how much effort you took into doing this for them and that they need to appreciate it.