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!

Valentine's Day Suncatchers

As I was reading through a few of my favorite blogs the other day, I came across this craft idea at Elle Belle's Bows. We recently gave in to the temptation of sushi, so I had two take out lids to start the program. Kenly was feeling poorly this week, so we took some time to craft instead of resting all day in front of the television. (Side note: We do limit her TV intake all the time, but all bets are off in times of sickness. Sometimes the opiate of television is the only way I can get her to slow down long enough to truly get well.) But I digress.

We transformed clear take out lids, pipe cleaners, hot glue, Elmer's glue, and tissue paper and into works of art (in our eyes at least).

First, I cut the tissue paper into small pieces and glued the pipe cleaners to the lids with hot glue. We created three suncatchers each with a different Valentine-like message.
Can you tell she's excited to "make craft"?
I even gave Kenly a pair of scissors to try her hand at cutting the tissue. No great success story to tell, but she had a blast trying. She felt very grown up.
I squirted huge blobs of glue on each container and let Kenly "paint" the glue over the entire surface. This was her favorite step by far.
We quickly placed the tissue on to the thoroughly glue-saturated take out trays. Kenly didn't like the way the glue felt as it dried on her hands, so I did most of the paper arranging. After they dried, I glued cute ribbon to the backs to make hangers.
An up close look at our workman ship.
We think they look great in the windows. Kenly can't stop talking about them. She reads these two all the time. She'll says, "That one says 'I love you' and the other one says 'kisses and hugs.'"
I think she's proud.
Adam thought we made purses, but upon closer inspection he realized his mistake. This craft was a great, low-key way to pass a morning while we were sick at home.
Thank you Elle Belle's Bows for a great way to spruce up our home for Valentine's Day.