My husband is pretty observant, and sometimes I forget about that fact.  I was reminded the other day when he walked in with this cute little farmhouse-themed, galvanized metal planter that he picked up a local farm and feed store. "I thought this looked like something you would like, so I brought it home for you", he said.  

What a sweetie!  Clearly he's paying attention to all my OCD decorating and vignette-ing, because he was spot-on with this.

It's a perfect fit for the family room, with it's Country French style, with touches of farmhouse and rustic.




It also turned out to be the impetus for an easy-peasy Valentine's Day project.   I wanted to do something simple and quick for Valentine's Day since I tend to not do much for this particular holiday (still recovering from Christmas).  

Chocolate always features prominently in our Valentine's Day celebrations every year, without fail, so when I saw these pretty little faux tulips a few days ago, a light went off.....  



Tulips 'planted' in my new planters that my husband gave me.  With Valentine-themed chocolate candies as the 'mulch'. 



Since I didn't want to buy a truckload of candy, I filled each planter with dried beans.    I didn't quite have enough beans to fill each one, so I grabbed some brown rice from my pantry to top off each planter. Even with the beans and rice, I used almost 4 bags of candy for this project.





The underlying beans perfectly support the flowers...as well as some pretty Valentine's Day labels created with clip art from The Graphics Fairy (found here).  I hot-glued two copies of each clip art design to skewers.