A Little Love...

I have a weakness for Valentine's Day stuff.  I don't know what it is.  The colors, the easy crafts, the great yummy treats?  Whatever it is, I thoroughly enjoy finding excuses to participate in it.  That's one of the reasons I had kids...  So, I decided for the second year in a row to throw the girls a little party.  Yes, it was intended for them but I am not ashamed to say that it also was for me.  We invited our mom's group over for a morning of controlled loving chaos.

I found a lot of motivation this year on pinterest (where has it been all my life).  I decided to make home made Valentine's this year and found a couple cute corny play on words to inspire me.  For Marcella, we made "Will you o"fish"ally be my Valentine?" labels and stapled them on top of clear plastic bags filled with goldfish. 

Adelyn's were a little more labor intensive, but fun to make.  We cut down old crayons,

stuffed and melted them in heart shaped silicone molds (we learned that you have to use Crayola.  All the generics contain too much oil that separates when you melt them. I'm sure you can get these molds lots of places but we got ours at Walmart),

and hot glued them onto labels we made saying, "You color my world."

I used washable crayons as well, since we were dealing with toddlers.

I made a dessert bar with strawberry cookie sandwiches and Valentine's puppy chow.  Click on the title for the recipes.

Both I thought were dangerously addictive.   I served strawberry milk and we exchanged valentine's. We ate our snacks picnic style on table cloths.

I had pre-made bags to keep their Valentine's and to use in a game we played later using brown lunch sacks, temera paint and stamps.

I hung them on textured string with the pre-mounted paper we used for our Daddy's Valentine we made.  I painted the kiddos hands with washable temera paint, stamped them upside down with fingers meeting to create a "heart" shape.  I outlined them with a black sharpie and asked them why they loved their daddy. I wrote the response around the heart.  I really like how they turned out! Sorry, photography is not my strong suit.

After their busy bodies were choc full of sinful sweets and uncontainable energy, I set them loose on the basement to find hearts that I had hid.  Even the little ones were able to participate and it kept them busy for a hole ten minutes!  That's like ten years in toddler time!

I enjoyed it, can't speak for others but I think the mommies enjoyed it, and the kids definitely had a blast!  Look at these faces...