Valentine’s Day — can you believe it is here already?  It seems like it was just Christmas! Here at NewlyWife, we thought a week of love was necessary to celebrate this heart-filled holiday. And what better way to kick it off than with a red, pink, and heart inspired Chex Mix recipe? I thought you might agree! Check out Betty Crocker for the original recipe.

Here are the ingredients that you need:

• 9 cups Chex cereal (the wheat kind, and you can buy the real deal, but who has that kind of money these days?)
• 3/4 cup Powdered Sugar
• 1 cup of Vanilla Brick (meltable candy stuff, or you can also buy vanilla chips)
• 1/2 cup Peanut Butter
• 1/4 cup Butter (margarine works just as well)
• 1/2 cup Red,  Pink & White M&Ms
• 1/4 cup Valentine’s Day Sprinkles
• Sweetheart Candies

Sound reasonable?

If you answered yes, you can begin (if not, then you can just come to my house and eat some of what I already made). Put cereal in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, melt together butter, peanut butter, and vanilla brick. Stir and pour over cereal. Try not to eat it all now. Put half of that mixture into a plastic bag with the powdered sugar. Shake it like a Polaroid picture, then spread out on a sheet of wax paper to cool.  Add M&Ms and sprinkles to the bowl mixture and stir again, dump onto another sheet of wax paper.  After about 15 minutes you can mix them back together in the original bowl (no sense dirtying up another one!) and add a few sweethearts, for character.  Now, eat to your heart’s content.

Or go ahead and place it in a cute heart shaped  bowl, like the one I used at our wedding, and wow your guests.

Then again, you can put it in a cute jar to give to a friend.  Because if your husband is anything like mine, he has already taken most of it in a ziploc and put it with his lunch.  He knows you made it just for him.

But shhh… I won’t tell if you take the stuff in the pretty jar to work and eat it yourself (because we all know that is what I did).