Valentine's Day Cards for Daddy

The kids are really excited to give Daddy the cards they made him for Valentine's Day. We used heart shaped doilies from the Dollar Store and painted their hands to make handprint hearts. Next time I'll mount these to cardstock to make them sturdier.



I'm sure Daddy will love them!

Linking to:

Handmade Valentine's Day Cards for Kids

Pinky has been asking for some time to go scrapbooking with me. When I saw that my local store was offering a "Kids Kamp" to make school valentines, I signed us up! This past weekend Pinky and I spent 2 hours at the store putting together 24 of the cutest Valentine's Day Cards. The store had everything ready for us. We just had to fold, glue, and ink (and do a bit of cutting with the words). It was the perfect project to hold a 5 year old's attention, and I really think the cards turned out great. Pinky does too and wants to keep them all in her room. I hope she changes her mind before Valentine's Day!

Here's a look at all the designs. We made 3 of each design:


And a closer look:

I love the bird!


The inside of the bunny card reads "wants to be your Valentine."


The inside of the owl card reads "you're a hoot" (Pinky's favorite -she thought it was hilarious) and the puppy card reads "You're Dog-gone Great!"


The inside of the hippo card reads "Hippo, Hippo Hurray it's Valentine's Day!"

I think Pinky's friends will really love these (if I can convince her to part with them).

One Last Gift

Don't worry, I didn't forget Wild One this Valentine's Day. I found this adorable cupcake fabric in the remnant section at Joanns and knew it would be perfect for some "fancy" burp cloths for Wild One.

I've wanted to make these forever and don't know why I waited. They were very quick and easy to sew. And now when Wild One spits up, she'll look stylish doing it!

A Swarm of Valentines

Pinky delivered all 20 of her butterfly Valentine's Day cards to her classmates today. When she saw this picture on Skip to my Lou, she KNEW she wanted to make them. Even standing in an aisle full of character-laden boxed cards couldn't sway her. Sigh - she's my girl after all. I've never been so proud!

She picked out the stickers and the paper we used. I cut them; she decorated and signed her name to the back. We worked together to add the Tootsie Pops. It was a lot of fun working on these together. And she couldn't be happier with how they turned out!


But this has led me to an important question - what do you call a group of butterflies? I searched the internet and found all sorts of answers - a swarm, a rabble, a flutter, even a rainbow. Is there one official, scientific name for this group (other than cute and delicious)?

I'm a fan of "flutter." I'm sure Pinky would vote for calling them a "rainbow of butterflies."

Love Monster Felt Puppets

I finally finished Chaos's Valentine's Day present. I stitched up these two "Love Monster" puppets out of felt and embellished them with scraps and ribbon. Pinky thinks they're cute, so that pretty much means Chaos will like them too.

These were really simple to make. I started by tracing an existing puppet (you could also just trace your hand with your pinky and thumb spread out from the other fingers). If I were to do this again, I would allow more room in the finger area. I underestimated how they would shrink once they were sewn (of course, I could have sewn these with the wrong sides together and left the stitching showing for more interest...never thought of that!).

Next, I cut them out and added the embellishments with scraps of felt and ribbon. Then I sewed them together. That's it!

These would be really fun to do with kids too. Depending on their age you could have the puppet forms already sewn and let the kids go wild glueing on the fabric scraps and ribbon.

I'm linking this over at 733 blog for their What Are Little Boys Made of? Weekly Roundup and the Idea Box at My Delicious Abiguity.

Valentine's Day Suncatchers

I've seen various versions of these suncatcher hearts floating around the internet. Since it's no secret that we love contact paper crafts around here (what's not to love? they're easy, quick and leave very little mess), I thought it would be fun to add a little Valentine's Day decoration to the house!

I had Pinky help me cut the tissue paper. She needs some practice with holding scissors and since the cuts didn't have to be perfect, I thought it was the perfect job for her.


Pinky loved this craft. She jumped right in and got to work (I didn't know princesses worked so hard).


Chaos wasn't very interested. He liked the stickiness of the contact paper and wanted to stick his sippy cup to it. Otherwise though, he gave up pretty early on so I finished his hearts.


The finished masterpieces. I'm always impressed by how pretty tissue paper is in the sun.

Linking to:

Felt Food Frenzy

I started these felt cookies last week, intending them to be a special gift for Valentine's Day, and was going to wait to post these, but when I saw the felt food cook along over at Helping Little Hands, I couldn't wait. (I couldn't wait to give them to the kids either, they're currently "cooking" them up for me.)


I made these using the tutorial at Dream a Lil Dream. I love the way the red stitching stands out.

Once Pinky saw the thumbprint cookies she decide we also needed sugar cookies in rainbow colors. So, I whipped these up (she chose the frosting colors):


Finally, just for fun, I made felt lollipops. I used the tutorial at One Inch World. These were so easy! It only took me about 15 minutes to make all four. I love quick projects like these!


Linking to:

Valentine's Day Felt Hair Clips

Inspired by the tutorial at Kro Designs I made these adorable felt heart hair clips for Pinky today.



I had planned to embellish these but once I got started I found that I really liked the simple look instead.

Pinky wants to wear these to school tomorrow. Is it too early to start wearing Valentine's Day stuff?

Linking to:

The Best of Intentions

I set out today with the intention of crossing an item off of my crafting list. I had the urge to make a glass tile necklace for myself. Since we're (still) in the process of moving rooms around, my craft stuff is in a very disorganized heap in my new craft area in the basement. While searching that giant heap for the supplies I needed, I came across some old scrapbooking paper that I had completely forgotten about.

One sheet that caught my attention was a full mock up of the Candyland board game. Now, I have NO idea what my original intention was when I bought this paper, but I'm so glad that I did. Pinky loves Candyland - more specifically she loves Princess Frostine. She loves her so much that I spend most of my day pretending to BE Princess Frostine. Princess Frostine has been to our house for tea parties and sleep overs; she's joined us for shopping trips at Wal-Mart and rides in the car, and she tucks Pinky into bed every night. She's become an obsession.

So, being your average forget-about-having-something-for-me-the-kids-would-love-this type of mom, I set to work to make Pinky a Princess Frostine glass tile necklace. I ended up with two tiles - one of Princess Frostine and one of her magic wand. I think Pinky is going to love these! I bought the ribbon necklaces (pictured in this previous post) on etsy to string the tiles on.

Here's the all important Princess Frostine necklace (these were nearly impossible to get a good picture of with my camera and my frustration got the better of me before I got around to the second necklace).


I'm sure I'll get around to making myself a necklace some other day...

Handmade Valentine's Day

My husband and I aren't big V-Day fans. Because of that, we don't do a whole lot of celebrating on Valentine's Day. Now that Pinky is getting older though, I feel like I should do something to mark the day (as no doubt it will be a BIG DEAL in school), so I made some small gifts for the kids.

For Pinky, some cool felt sugar cookies (from this tutorial).


For Chaos, his own plush taggie football. I know it's not valentine-y, but it's hard to find handmade craft ideas for little boys. The pattern is from here. It was good sewing practice, even if it isn't the best looking football.