Valentine's Round-up...Free Printables...

Check out more free printable Valentine's day cards here.

Is Valentine's Day seriously just around the corner? Hallie's ready to start on her box - I told her to make sure she needs a box before we start going down that road. I think I have her worried that third graders don't exchange Valentines!

It will be hard to beat the last two years. I think we need to bring it down a notch just so next year the expectations will be simple again. When I suggested a cereal box covered in card stock she laughed at me. Lets be honest - Hallie will throw out some idea and I'll agree it's the best idea and we'll run with it. Neither one of us is afraid of a little time and energy!


Click for more details about Hallie's gumball machine


Click for more details about Hallie's Bumble Bee


Download Airhead Valentine


Download "Write" Valentine


Download Glowstick Valentine


Download Gumball Valentine

Valentine's day...with fingerprints...

Although I like Valentine's day, it might be my least favorite of all the holidays. I don't need yet another holiday that brings candy into the house. I hate my kids eating candy. I have nothing against sugar - I'm quite a fan myself. But candy is a different story. There are tears because so-and-so got more candy than them. I find sticky half-eaten suckers in places other than the kitchen and the wrappers get shoved in every nook and cranny. Not to mention that no matter how well I tell Hallie to hide her candy from her brothers...they always find it which results in more tears when she returns from school to find her stash demolished. I'd rather give them a dozen sugar cookies and clean up the crumbs under the bar stool.

Having said that...Valentine's day was great. There were class valentine's day parties - conversation heart bingo, exchanging of cards, heart shaped sugar cookies and a whole lot of red and pink. I sent Steve photos every hour that looked just like this (and other cheesy conversation heart sayings!): Finding a babysitter is near impossible so we had family dinner at Panda Express and ice cream at McDonalds per the kid's request. And once all the kids were finally tucked away in bed, Steve and I could finally enjoy an adult conversation. That man shows me he loves me every single day and is constantly serving me whether it's Valentine's day or not. I'm a lucky lady.

Valentine day cards...Free Printables...

I love the excitement my kids have when getting their Valentine cards ready. They ask for at least two weeks before they need them and we end up doing them two days before they need them. For Hunter's preschool class he gave them cards with glow bracelets attached, "You make my heart glow". He meticulously signed his name on all 25 cards. He told me his hand was hurting a little over half way through. Hallie already determined her valentine needed to match her gumball machine (here), naturally. She has a new obsession with writing her name in cursive and she signed every card this way. She folded every card and stapled the card to a bag of gumballs. I love when they're fully capable to do their own projects with minimal supervision! I have to admit- the gumball machine is a favorite. It's just fun.

Here are links to the cards above.

Download Glowstick Valentine

Download Gumball Valentine

Valentine's Day; Gumball machine...

Happy week of love! My kids are gearing up for their Valentine's Day class parties are so excited to give their valentines.

This year, Hallie came home with her box assignment (Last years here) and said she wanted to create a flower pot. She's a girl who knows what she wants...so we searched the internet for "flower pot" ideas. In our search, we came across this gumball machine because it used a flower pot bottom for the top. She loved it, but still wanted a flower pot. We kept searching and in the end she changed her mind and wanted the gumball machine - but only if she could also give gumballs to her class mates. Fair enough. My "sky-is-the-limit" mentality is definitely rubbing off on my daughter. I'm obviously not the person to correct her. So we worked together and made it happen.

It really was quite easy and took very little time. We started with an oatmeal canister and a plastic 1 gallon fish bowl from petsmart (I was able to use Steve's employee discount for the first time in over three years). We cut a hole in the canister and spray painted it, as well as a 6" terra cotta pot base, a nice cherry red. We hot glued a bolt on top and on the side and cut some tin foil to act as the opening of the gumball machine. I knew we had a tube of 1 inch gumballs (from World Market) stashed away in the office from Christmas two years ago that we could fill the fish bowl with. And wouldn't you know, I brought the tube out of hiding and the majority of the gumballs were gone...we have some sneaky kids and I was reminded I need to have better hiding places! Luckily my niece came to the rescue with some old gumballs from a machine in her room. She warned us not to eat them because they were really stale - which made them perfect for our application! We didn't attach the bowl to the canister or even the flower pot base to the fish bowl. They all just sit on top of each other. That's the only way she was going to be able to transport it to and from school without my help. She was one excited girl walking out the door this morning with this in her hands - love her excitement for projects and love that in her mind anything is possible.

I took one look at it and thought it was way too much work. But she convinced me it was doable. And it was. It was actually easy. Love my "sky-is-the-limit" girl.

Kid's Valentine Card Printables...

Valentine's day is just around the corner - Hallie asked me the other day what her valentine is going to be this year. Good Question. Haven't put any thought into it. Then in my inbox this week I had several people request last year's valentine printable. Which means there's a whole group of people out there already on the ball. I'm typically that person - this bathroom remodel is knocking me off my game!

Here's last years cards: I don't go overboard with these little things (lets be serious, the kid receiving it quickly removes the candy and tosses the card!) - the simpler the better and I make the kids work on them; cutting out or attaching candy. Once I design it, I can use it for another kid the next year which helps me out. By the time Cannon is passing out cards he'll have a library to choose from.

Here are links to the cards above.

Download Airhead Valentine

Download "Write" Valentine


Speaking of Valentine's Day - does a card box get much cuter than this. (here) There's no way she's beating that this year.

More Valentine's fun here and here.

Valentine Festivities...

Love day is over. Our children are safely tucked in their beds with sugar comas, only to awake tomorrow with sugar headaches and meltdowns. The things we do to celebrate holidays!! The kids enjoyed their school parties and came home with buckets of treats. I'm seriously boycotting candy in the Valentine's we give next year. I think they got more candy today than they did on Halloween. I was slightly distracted this afternoon as I visited with family and before I knew it most of the candy had been consumed. And Bennett had a good chunk of it still in his mouth when I found him. When Steve got home from work we went on a family date to enjoy two of our favorite foods; Tia Rosas and Frozen Yogurt. (Because the amount of sugar they had earlier was definitely not enough to make them slip into a deep sugar induced coma.) I suppose the yogurt was icing on the cake! I enjoyed a little scavenger hunt that Hallie and Hunter created for me to find my cards from them, Hallie is a clever girl and she's training her brother in her ways! According to Hallie, "You're the best mom ever and I love you so much. P.S. I love that you always cook me dinner." That alone made the day worth waking up for.

It was a lovely day of love. Hopefully Steve and I can celebrate another day (sans kids) when not all the babysitters in the area are being used! :)

Bumble Bee Valentine's Day Box...

Two of Hallie's favorite things are craft projects and school. When her teacher sends home assignments that require her to be crafty she is over the moon excited. Of course the minute she walks through the door she wants to work on it. Knowing the assignment isn't due for some time I push her off. Multiple times a day she talks about the project, "Can we start it now?" I had pushed her off long enough and she started coming home telling me about all the projects that had already been returned to the school...It was time, we finally crafted her Valentine's box.

We looked through different sized boxes and had a couple ideas, but when I came across the peanut butter pretzel tub from Costco a light clicked on; we could make a butterfly or a bird or a bee or a bug and use the canister as the body. Hallie was convinced the bee was the way to go and we started crafting. I taught her out to use the straight edge cutter (the tool I never let her use before!) to cut the yellow stripes and even taught her how to use a glue gun. I would draw pencil lines on the paper and she would carefully cover the lines with the glue. She tried several different designs on the wings but decided the valentine stickers were the way to go. After almost two hours of paper, glue and scissors we finally finished. A minute later she was asking if we could make the Valentine's for her classmates. I pushed her off - we don't have to turn those things in until Thursday!!