Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy (late) Valentine's Day!

Since I've been so behind, I didn't post many of our Valentine's Day crafts before Valentine's Day. Better late than never, right? We found these adorable heart shaped cards at Michael's, and Kenly made them beautiful with paint and stickers. Kenly still doesn't understand that mixing all the colors equals brown, but she still managed to make all the cards unique. We painted both sides and then added stickers for embellishment.









We also made three sets of heart shaped crayons. Kenly kept one set, and we gifted the others to her friends Ava and Davis. I bought a silicone muffin pan from Target for $2.50. It will be our permanent crayon maker. I highly recommend a silicone muffin pan for recycling old broken crayons.

I found S.B Creatively blog just before February began, and I found this Valentine's Day Countdown idea and decided to make one to use and two to share. Kenly loved counting down to Valentine's Day. The hardest part was explaining that we could only cover a heart with a sticker once a day.

The craft is really simple. Cut out shapes to make a tree. Cut out 14 hearts and number them. Glue it all together, and you have a countdown poster.




Here's our completed tree. We used foam stickers from Dollar Tree to cover each day. Kenly still wants to add stickers even though she knows that the holiday has passed. I'd say this was a huge success.
We also tried our hand at salt dough ornaments. My blogging friend at Elle Belle's Bows gave me the idea. The recipe we used came from here. Kenly loves kneading the dough. She kept saying, "Tiggers don't like that icky sticky stuff." It was really cute to see her try and discover whether or not she likes the goop on her hands.

She asked for the little rolling pin from her kitchen to help me roll out the dough.
We used cookie cutters to make three different sized hearts. Then we used a straw to poke a hole for the string we were going to use. I also made a few X's and O's for our end product.


I love how hard she is pressing down on this cutter. She wants to get it just right.
After we finished cutting everything out, we placed the ornaments in the oven to dry. The whole drying process took about 40 minutes. The ornaments were still a bit damp so we continued to let them air dry from a few days.

Once they were dry, we painted the ornaments with acrylic paints. Kenly felt poorly this day, so I couldn't get her to crack a smile for the camera. She just wanted to paint in peace.



We used egg cartons to facilitate the drying process. Some of the hearts have both sides painted. Others do not.

Once the paint dried, I added "conversation heart sayings" with a permanent marker. I clear coated the ornaments as a finishing touch. I used kite string to make the hearts into ornaments. I then found the perfect twigs from the yard to make a Valentine's Day Tree.

I placed the "tree" on the mantel. When Adam saw it, he was really impressed. He thinks it looks like art. I was happy that he thought it looked beautiful. He not a huge holiday freak like I am.
For Valentine's Day, Adam made me one of my favorite dishes--Saucy Shrimp. Doesn't it look wonderful? We think Valentine's Day is a commercialized holiday, so we tend to be very low key about the whole day. We feel you should express Valentine's Day sentiments every day, so we do. Kenly did receive a few gifts from us--Candy Land, a CD, a book, and some candy. She's our very special Valentine.
Earlier in the month, my friend Missy hosted a girls' night for a good cause--Hearts 4 Kids. This program accepts homemade valentines that are then delivered to children's hospitals across the state. So, eight women spent two hours making 76 valentines. It was so much fun.






Happy Valentine's Day!

2 comments:

Missy Reinke said...

Great pics! I love the crafts you do with Kenly!

Elle Belles Bows said...

Great post (and not because I am in it). You did so many wonderful activities! I love how your ornaments turned out and good idea in using the straw to make the holes!!

Totally laughing about the brown paint too!!

Thanks for the tip about using the silicone trays for the crayons. I have not done them yet but thought it would be fun for Easter.

I am behind in the blogging arena too. The hubby had time off. So, we got some quality time in, but now he is sick:-( Hope E and I don't catch it.

Have a super weekend!!

Kerri