valentines.

I let the girls browse class Valentine ideas on Pinterest and then choose one to make. Elsa was torn between many ideas but eventually settled on the twinkie minions. (She had never had a twinkie before and was pretty fascinated. And she kept calling them squinkies.) Amelia immediately liked the space-themed valentine.

I think this was the first year that Amelia was able to make her Valentines entirely on her own. She loved making all of the stars using gold and silver markers. She attached a bouncy ball and Hershey kiss to each one.

Valentine's Day Tea

I surprised the girls with a little Valentine's Day tea party after school with pink lemonade and heart-shaped brownies. And heart-shaped pancakes for dinner.

Valentines.

It had been a few years since I made cake pops so we decided to make some Valentine-themed cake pops on Monday after school. We put them in flower pots for teachers. The girls had fun assembling their school Valentines while we were staying at a cabin on Saturday. Elsa's fishbowl Valentine came from here and Amelia's owl Valentine was a recycled idea from a few years ago.

Each year we put out small mailboxes around the first of February so we can leave each other little notes and treats.

Valentine Scratch Cards

We had a lot of fun making the Valentine scratch cards that I saw here. They are really easy to make and we're already scheming about lots of other non-Valentine uses for scratch cards.

Valentine Cupcake Pops

Okay. This will be the last Valentine-related post. Due to our snow week, Valentine's Day festivities have really been extended. School parties aren't even being held until this week. So we spent the end of our snow week making Valentines for Amelia's teachers.





We already had supplies laying around that were left over from our Christmas cake pops, and luckily Valentine's Day uses red and white too. We added a little pink and some heart sprinkles. We looked around the house for something to put them in and found these flower pots, which inspired our flower card and message.

Valentines: Part 2

We're on Day 6 of being snowed in. Yesterday we finished up our cards.

There is a free printable card to use with the heart crayons at The Long Thread which you can download here. But we wanted to do our own thing and Amelia wanted to use a colorful peacock so I made this card:


I thought it would be fun to include a picture that the kids could color with their new crayon so I used Photoshop to remove all the color from the peacock and included a black and white version on the back of the card.

Then we attached the hearts to the front using foam dots:


Instead of using envelopes, I found some clear bags and we packaged them up:


Inspired by some fun owl pencils found at the dollar section in Target, we also made some owl cards for friends:




You can find a template for the owls, along with many others, at Family Fun.

Valentines: Part 1 (Heart-shaped crayons)

We had fun making heart-shaped crayons to use for Valentines for Amelia's class. This was a good project to work on with her since she was able to help peel off the paper and break up the crayons.


Step 1: Gather your old crayons and peel off the paper. Break them up into small pieces.


Step 2: Lightly grease a heart-shaped pan and fill each cup with crayon pieces in any color combination you like.


Step 3: Bake at 250 until melted, about 8 to 10 minutes. (You might want to put a baking sheet underneath to catch any possible drips.)


Step 4: Once they have cooled, pop them out and check out the fun colors!


I also tried cutting up the crayons with a knife to get even smaller pieces and put lots of different colors together. The results were very fun.


Next up: Attaching the crayons to cards...