Valentines Ideas

I'm trying to get organized and get several things posted on here, but haven't pulled it off yet (I do have a few drafts started, now just to finish them. . .).  Since it is almost Valentines Day I wanted to share what we did last year.  We had so much fun with it.  In fact we were at Michaels today and my kids begged for the mailboxes again.  If I wasn't working this year I would have already had some of this stuff ready to go again.  My kids could stand to show a little more love to each other.

First we decided to decorate mailboxes.  We purchased some at the local craft store.  We covered them in paper and ribbon.  I fully intended to embellish them, but we never did make it back to that part.

 

We have this little half wall upstairs outside the bedrooms.  This housed our mailboxes.  The mailboxes served two purposes: 1) to collect hearts, 2) to collect special surprises from mom.  What are the hearts all about?  I'll tell you.  I took some large foam hearts and everyone in the family decorated it with their name and whatever else they wanted using glitter glue.  This served as the top for our mobile.  Every day each person took a small heart and wrote something nice or something they liked about each person in the family (one heart/saying per family member).  They left the filled out heart in their mail box and put up the flag indicating there was mail.  When I got around to it I would attach these small hearts to the big heart.  By Valentines Day we each had a mobile filled with love.

 

This one was mine.  I loved how the messages are in their writing and spelling.

Next I made a bunch of little sayings to put with various treats.  I can't take credit for all of them, but I can't remember where I found some of the ideas or I would link to them.

A little heart shaped brownie

Nuts for the hubby and paint set for the kiddos

Soda for the hubby and Valentine Pixos for the kids.

 

Some stickers that were on clearance

 

 The top was tied to a bottle of root beer (see below) and the bottom was attached to a glow bracelet

Dynamite: aka Pringles.  Large for dad, small for kids.

Here are the bottles of pop and dynamite waiting for pick-up.  Doesn't mom's mailbox look a little left out.  Maybe I should find treats for me this year. . .

The best part of all the fun is that I had most of the items I gave my kids already.  I try to hit the sales after the holidays and so the toys I already had on hand.  I just had to think of some cute sayings to go with them.

The final picture is the Valentine treat I made for my Sunday School Class.  Last year my husband and myself were team teachers for the 12 turning 13 year old Sunday School class.  They all enjoyed their ipods.  I found this idea here.

Here (hopefully) are I'm still trying to figure out how to attach a document to the blog so you can have some of the attachments I made for the treats (I didn't save the first ones I made, but then I wised up). Since there is nothing fancy to them (they were just created in word using the available clip art) I'm going to post this and then hope that I figure out how to allow you to download a document (hopefully tomorrow when I'm more awake).

I also made my husband the cutest candy filled soda bottles that you probably have seen around.  I thought I took some pictures, but they weren't with the rest of the Valentine pics so I'll have to dig around.  We also did a countdown for us - a couples countdown.  I took that idea from a site and can't remember which so I don't feel comfortable sharing it.  But I will say that I made 14 envelopes and taped them to the wall.  Inside the envelopes I had cards that had a something typed on that we needed to do that day.  Sometimes it was silly, fun, or romantic.  Use your imagination and make your own.