Valentine's Day Prep

Valentine's Day is a huge deal for me, not because I'm especially attached to the fake romance of a Hallmark Holiday, but because I'm the kind of mom who loves traditions and holidays.  So VD is just another excuse for me to give my kids a little something extra to make them feel specially.  This year I wanted to decorate for the holiday but I'm 1) exceptionally lazy and 2) trying not to spend too much money.  I do happen to have a ton of pictures frames lying around though so I figured if I could find some cute printables that would be fun.  And I did.  The View From 510 had the cutest Valentine's Day printables collected that I'd seen in my fifteen minutes of searching (remember I said lazy here, but really they are totally adorable) and they were all free.  So I downloaded every single one of them.  And one night when Dr. J was working nights I printed them off, stuck them in frames and placed them around the house.  

 Love the Love Is Spoken Here Print.  Obviously this one can stay up all year.  

These three all say Valentine's Day on them so they'll be coming down February 15th, but when you consider they were free, and adorable, not big deal :)

This I Love You one is probably going to be sitting next to my $5 orchid, yup that's right, $5!  Thank you Sam's Club clearance.  

This tiny little Love More one on the dresser that yes I was going to finish, but we decided to put in our room until it warms up and we actually get around to it, well it is my FAVORITE!  So adorable.  Thanks a ton 510 for searching these out, and thanks Sprik Space, Every Creative Endeavor, Pizzazzerie, The Tomkat Studio, J&A and Company, Eighteen25, and Lovely Little Snippets for your amazing printable art.  It made decorating for the season easy, cheap, and fun.

I then got cracking on Valentine's for the kids to take to school.  Hello having three kids makes little things hard work.  By the time we were done cutting, writing, and putting tattoos away my fingers were TIRED!  I took Peach to the store and she choose these Tattoo butterfly animals.  They were adorable and disturbing all wrapped up in one.  She helped put the stickers on that held them closed while mom and Gigi tore them all apart, put the tattoos in and folded them.  She then (with the help of mom) signed all of them.  That is actually one of my favorite parts about Valentine's, it is a great way to work on writing/learning how to write your name.  

Captain E told me weeks ago that he wanted to do Star Wars Light Saber Valentines weeks ago.  I some some at the store but they were going to cost me 8 dollars, and look, I'm sort of cheap, so we went looking around online.  We found two different sets that he liked so we printed out both types.  The first was at Cute As A Fox.  The second was at Stitch Craft Creations.  I bought $30 glow stick bracelets at Target for a total of $2.  He got lots of cutting practice and mom only lit two glow sticks on accident while putting them in.  Thank goodness for the EXTRAS!

Gigi's valentines were these cute bubble wands I found at Target.  A pack of 24 only cost $3.  I cut out 24 hearts for her (plus a few extra for family members) six at a time using stacked scrapbook paper.  Then we made slits and shoved the bubble wands in.  We saw that idea somewhere online but I can't remember where.  She finished it off by adding her name.  Everyone was super happy.  Thanks internet for all the great ideas!  Thank you pinterest for making up for those of us who are absolutely not creative or artistic.  Thank you amazing craft bloggers out there who are willing to share their talents!  I wanted to stay away from Candy for several reasons this year.  One, I didn't want the extras lying around here.  I only believe in eating chocolate, but if that cheap stuff is here, I'll eat that as well :)  Two, I've been thinking about allergies a lot, so hopefully this was funner for the kids to do and it will go over well with their classmates.