"HOO" doesn't love Valentines?

Land's "Owl" be your Valentine-
I love his sense of humor. Each owl needed a Mario Brothers moustache so he changed his beaks, and added flair to some of the girl ones. He also liked to make the eyes go all crazy.






Parks "Valentine you're a HOOT" (looks like one of Lands flair birds made it in the picture too)

Any one that knows me, knows that I love Valentines Day. This year I thought it would be especially fun to make our own Valentine Cards for the kids and their classmates. I perused the internet for inspiration and came up with a cute owl theme. I was concerned that it might be a hard sell to the kids, but they loved the idea. So I took to quickly getting the supplies, when reality suddenly hit. Now I am no Math expert, but I knew that at five hearts per card, and 50 cards to make, that I had just got myself into a lot of miserable heart cutting. Please won't someone restrain me the next time that I get a bright idea? There is a reason that kids don't just put conversation hearts into the little paper envelopes where every card and candy heart had been hand picked for each of their little friends like we did growing up. It is a lot of work when you can go to the store and buy a box of cards with two saying choices and the candy already attached. Lucky for me I remembered the generous offer of my favorite Aunt Teana from my last post offering to let me borrow her Cricut. Saved from hours of countless heart cutting, and we finally got to work.

It was actually a fun activity. My kids love to do crafts, and are really rather creative, and proud of their creations, in case you couldn't see it in the picture below.

Why I Love Valentines #4

Sugar Cookies! I love sugar cookies and so do the kids. They take a little bit more time than my usual cookie, so I make them only occasionally. One of these occasions is Valentines day. This year we made them with my sister Shari and her children Abbie and Ethan. Just look at some of their creations. I have to say we have a group of very talented kids!

Make a Smilebox free scrapbooking design

Why I love Valentines Day Reason #3

All of the fun heart and love themed items this time of year are soooo cute! The best part is I can admire them, but not feel obligated to do anything more than that unless I choose to. This is what I decided to do this year.

Last year I made some fun water bottle tags for my kids teachers on teacher apprecitation day. I am not sure where I originally saw the idea, but I decided to take and tweak it for my kids to give to their teachers for Valentines Day. I labeled it as "Love Potion" It was a pretty simple to execute, and I thought it turned out kind of cute.

Why I love Valentines Day Reason #2

For Valentines, the kids and I bought a box of "Pot of Gold" chocolates for Michael. Being his favorite chocolates, he would have loved them anyway, but we took the chocolates and made them extra special. There were 16 chocolates and the kids and I took and typed out 16 things that we loved, or memories of special times with Michael. We then cut them into little strips and folded them up and placed them each under a chocolate. We gave the chocolates to him at our special Valentine breakfast. Parker could not wait for Michael to open his chocolates. Michael couldn't understand why she was being so silly about having chocolates for breakfast. I finally had to tell him he needed to open the box. (Dads, sometimes the just don't get it.) He had just barely opened it up, and Parker is excitedly yelling in his ear, "look under a chocolate!" I don't know which was better, seeing the appreciation in Michael's eyes, or the excitement on the kids faces. Another reason why I love Valentines Day.

Why I love Valentines Day...so not a hater!

I think that Valentines Day is one of my favorite holidays. Who can't like a holiday that is all about love? Apparently there are those who are haters though. This year I have heard an awful lot of people speaking out negatively against this poor little holiday. So in my effort to defend the day, I will prepare the reasons why I love Valentines Day!

I helped each of the kids with the traditional class Valentines. I have to admit that at first, I felt a little bit like a failure for not being the Mom who lovingly crafted individual cards with my kids for each of their class mates, but I have decided that I have to stop being such a "hater". I just can't hate myself for not doing something, even if I think it is a fabulous idea. Besides, I have come to the realization that as a Mom, we spend all of this time to make the "best" little crafty do-hickey, but for who? Have you seen how quickly the Kindergartner rips all your work to shreds to get to the candy? I think we do it to satisfy our need to impress other mothers. Well, 99.9% of the time those other mothers don't see your hours of labor as it was intended anyway. So this year I admired the cute crafty valentines from other moms on the web, but we did the store bought Pixie Stix and Fun Dips. This was the best decision ever! I sat with each of the kids and we got them done BEFORE they needed them and had a stress free fun evening together. I think I should even get bonus points for turning the evening into a learning experience. I had Landon practice his "pinch and rest" while writing on his Valentines, and had Parker do math in order to figure out how many more Valentines she would need.