A couple weeks ago one of my good friends shared some treats her dog “made” to give to his friends as Valentine’s day treats on her Instagram. I loved the idea so much I decided to adapt it and send my friends and 2013 clients some surprises courtesy of Lucy the cat!  Lucy is a pretty big part of my brand (she has her own page on my website!) so I thought it would be cute to send the treats FROM her to her animal friends:) I’m also  always looking for unique and relatively inexpensive gift ideas to use for client gifts, and this one was something no one else was really doing for their clients! I really got into making the packaging and putting it all together…these little projects are one of the really fun parts of my job!

We (Lucy, with a little help from me) made dog treats as well as kitty treats (only a few of my 2013 couples have kitties, what’s up with that??) but I’m not sure if the kitties all really liked their homemade treats, so I won’t be blogging that particular recipe. Lucy actually ate some of the cat treats while they were warm, but had a difficult time chewing them once they cooled. Some of my clients said that their cats loved the treats, but I’m not really convinced the recipe is good…so instead I’m sharing the puppy treat recipe with you guys! They are so easy to make and I know they were a crowd pleaser! I love that these homemade treats don’t have any preservatives or crappy chemicals in them…they’re made from simple ingredients that you can pronounce!

Lucy’s Peanut Butter Puppy Treats:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup honey
1 TB olive oil
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour

Mix wet and dry ingredients separately, then combine into one large bowl. Stir together, then mix with your hands if you’d like. Spread a nice big sheet of parchment paper onto your counter top (our flour it…the dough gets sticky!) and roll out the dough until it’s about 1/4 of an inch thick. Cut out shapes and bake treats on a cookie sheet for 14-16 minutes at 350 degrees.

I bought my cookie cutters at Joann of all places!  I also sewed all of the little muslin bags on my new sewing machine and painted on the hearts with a cheap acrylic craft paint mixed with some fabric medium. And since I was worried the treats would leave grease stains on the cute little bags, I decided to wrap the treats in little cello bags! I sealed them with washi tape and tied Lucy’s recipe around the little sack so Lucy’s friend’s parents would know what was in them in case their “kids” had sensitive stomachs, or in case they wanted to make them again!

The last part of the process was making little cards to go with them! We (meaning mostly me lol) painted hearts on the cards and stamped “Love You” onto the fronts and wrote on the backs “Hope you have a PURRFECT Valentine’s day! Love, Lucy the cat (and her humans, Katie and John)”. Yeah, no one ever accused me of not being cheesy:)

We also made these cute little catnip hearts for kitties in case the treats were not well received (kitties can be picky…).

So that’s pretty much it! Putting together these little Valentines was truly a labor of love, but I had fun making them! I hope all of the recipients were just as excited to receive and enjoy them!