Valentine's Day 2013

 I had been wanting to make a banner using book pages. With Valentine's Day approaching, I thought it would be a perfect time to do it. 

I had, and still have, a ton of these cutout felt hearts (in a variety of colors) from Christmas clearance 2 years ago. 

Anyone want to make a banner??? :) Seriously.

I also found this cute Valentine printable for the mantle here.

We like to make homemade Valentines...even the big kids like to give them to their friends. I found several Valentines from Pinterest (of course) to chose from.

"Valentine's Day {MAD LIB}from YOUR SECRET ADMIRER"

Taylee rolled this up and tied a cute Valentine's Day pencil with it.

"Hey Valentine Let's Stick Together!"

Abree helped to wrap and tape all of these for her classmates.

"i hope you have a FAN{TACHE}TIC valentines day!"

Everyone wanted to give these..cute, huh?

I have started a tradition of making my kids lunch for Valentine's Day (a gift of service, since they usually make their own). I also try to put something special or out-of-the-ordinary in them. This year I wrapped a Valentine joke around their treat and put a cheesy Valentine on their chips. :)

"for NACHO average VALENTINE"

These are the Valentines I found on my bed.

Here's what I gave to Jason.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As Valentine's Day approached, I asked my kids if they wanted to make or buy valentines for their classmates/friends. They said they wanted to make them.

I pinned my heart out on Pinterest and found several I thought would be fun. But of course we didn't actually sit down to make them until.... the night before!

"I'm WILD about you Valentine!"

The original idea used little plastic animals, but I couldn't find any at the Dollar Store, so we went with iced animal cookies instead.

"STUCK on you Valentine!"

What kid doesn't like Band-aids? We bought some super hero band-aids for the boys and rainbow colored ones for the girls.

"Valentine you are the BOMB!"

I didn't think this one through, unit AFTER I had sent them to school. I wondered if I would be receiving a phone call from the principal letting me know that our valentines were inappropriate because of the NO tolerance (of weapons) policy at school. --Oops. No phone calls. Whew.

The kids picked what kind they wanted to give to each one of their classmates/friends. Rylee and Taylee even joined us and gave some to their friends too.

I wanted to do something special for Jason, so I came up with the idea to make his Valentine's gift last ALL DAY long. On the hour, he got to open a bag. In the bag were treats and a quality/thing I love about him.

Our kids are quite independent when it comes to getting ready for school and making their own lunches, but I wanted to do something special for them for Valentine's Day. So I made each one of them a lunch, including a treat and note from me wishing them a Happy Valentine's Day.

PS- Abree and Treyson reported that the Band-aid valentines were possibly confusing to their classmates.

Treyson reported that one of the kids said, "Seriously...a Band-aid???"

Abree reported that a girl in her class, wrote in her daily journal, that the worst valentine she got was a Band-aid.

Abree said, "Don't you get it? It says 'I'm STUCK on you Valentine'."

"Ohhhh, I see."

Then the girl quickly took it out of the package and put in on...even though she wasn't hurt.

See? She really did love it... she just didn't know it.

Whooo Loves You?!

Krissi was here this week.

We did nothing too extraordinary, but had FUN doin' a whole lotta nothin'.

When we are together, usually something crafty occurs.

This week; Owl Valentine cookies.

The original idea used OREOs and different kinds of melting chocolates. I have a hard time copying someone's idea verbatim, so mine look a little different.

What I used: vanilla sandwich cookies, wintogreen Lifesavers, mini chocolate chips, cinnamon lips (cut in 1/2), pink colored melting chocolates and orange frosting.

On the site where I found the cookie idea, she also had these cute cards to print off.

I like that mine look like the Valentine card. Sooooo cute!

Jason's ACTUAL Birthday

Just because the party was over, didn't mean that I was done surprising Jason. I had a few more surprises up my sleeve.......

I told Jason I wanted to celebrate his birthday Friday night with the kids, because I had something different planned for Saturday, his ACTUAL birthday.

Cute wall quilt made/designed by my MIL. It has button-off interchangeable names for each person in our family. Isn't it fun?!

I cooked his birthday dinner request.... tater tot casserole.

Then we had him open presents from us.

I was trying to keep the evening as normal as possible, so we all got our jammies on and Jason and the kids watched some Olympics, before we had banana cream pie (another birthday request).


I started to get nervous as it got closer to 9:00pm. I had a "special delivery" set to arrive around then. At around 9:15, we heard a knock at the door. The kids rushed to answer it. (I wanted Jason to answer, but the kids were just too fast.) They opened the door and there stood Ira and Nicky Crawford. Rylee rushed over to Jason and said, "Ira and Nicky are here????"


The Crawford family had travelled from Smithfield, Utah to stay with us for the weekend and to surprise Jason for his birthday. Yay!


Jason and Ira have been good friends since high school in Alaska. Jason says they only knew each other for a short time, before they moved away from one another, but have remained friends and have kept in touch over the years. Ira's older brother Jason, is also another very good friend.


We hadn't seen the Crawford's in years, but we just picked up where we left off and started our fun weekend together. ---Nicky and I have become good friends also. We always enjoy lots and lots of good talking time, usually centered around being a mom, a wife and other commonalities we share. ---Our kids had fun together too. Rylee said, "It was nice to hang out with friends that had kids our age." (She and Brayden are only a month a part... but everyone else are different ages. It's all a matter of perception.) Taylee hung out with Brayden and Emilie. Treyson really got along with Emilie and the little boys Abree also enjoyed playing with the little boys. We all had fun being together.

We stayed up WAY too late and talked Friday night. (I loved every minute of it.)
Then Saturday, Jason worked a little in the morning, then came home to spend time with Ira, while Nicky and I went shopping. Later that evening, Ira, Nicky, Jason and I went to dinner and then a play. We saw "Footloose" put on by Starlight Mountain Theater, at the Nampa Civic Center. Jason and I had seen this play during the summer, but this time it had a new cast including our good friends Brandon and Mindi Pierce. It was entertaining and fun to see the people we knew in it. (Another member of the cast was from our old ward. She did an awesome job too.) When we got home, we celebrated more by having pie... chocolate satin and banana cream. Yum!

Sunday, the Crawfords went to sacrament meeting with us and then headed towards home. We managed to get a few photos in, right before church.

Nicky, Jarin, Brayden, Kamden, Ira & Emilie Crawford.
Jarin was NOT happy to have his picture taken that morning...but at least he was in them. :)

Jason & Ira... still good friends after all these years.

A Valentine's Day treat for the kids... and maybe a little bribery for taking pictures too.

"Can we eat them now? PLEASE!!!"

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

.....and HAPPY BIRTHDAY (again) Jason!

Heart Break

Taking a little break from all the birthday posts (yes, there are more!), to bring you heart happenings.... Valentine's Day stuff.

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FHE

For FHE we talked about kindness, by word and action. We challenged our family to treat each other with kindness and to notice when others treated us with kindness. --As we did kind things or had kindness given to us, we wrote it down on slips of paper and put it in our "Love Bucket". Our goal was to fill the bucket before the week ended. We reached our goal and the "Love Bucket" overflowed with kindness. The next week, we read all the kind acts and shared a treat too.

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Pre-school Valentine's Day Party

The plan:

Heart worksheet

Lacing hearts

Heart leis

Dancing

"Candyland" game

Cookie decorating

and a Valentine exchange.

Abree concentrates on getting her heart lei just right.

Andi models the finished product.

The girls actually really enjoyed lacing these hearts, but were not that interested in learning how to tie. Too hard and frustrating for right now.

Yum?

Emylie says YES!

The girls decorated these little mailboxes the day before. Toward the end of our party, they delivered their Valentines to each friend's mailbox. They were SO excited! Our mailboxes were so full of LOVE the lids wouldn't fit, so we put them in bags and they took them home to open.

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School Classmate Valentines

Most of my kids are satisfied with store-bought Valentines.......

except for Taylee.

Taylee prefers to make Valentines for her school classmates from scratch. (She's not demanding, just very excited about it each year, so I indulge her and we come up with something original... or more likely, something I've seen in a magazine or blog. )

Here is what we came up with this year.

"Valentine You & I Are A Perfect Match"

And for the teachers, we made bigger ones, with the candy cane hearts I melted a few weeks back.

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Valentine's Day Swap

I participated in another swap. This time with a Valentine's Day theme.

"I'm FORTUNATE to have you Valentine" -Chocolate-dipped and sprinkled fortune cookies

"We make a great PAIR Valentine" -Cute knee-high Valentine socks

"Valentine STICK with me" -Homemade pin cushion with Shrinky Dink pins

"Valentine you're SWEET" -Box of chocolates

"Valentine we're a perfect MATCH" -Homemade match book with candy cane heart

"Valentine you're the BOMB" -Bath bomb

"I hope U-NO how much I like you Valentine" -Mini Uno game cards

I also sent a "Love Pillow". A "Love Pillow" is a simple tradition of family service. When you find the pillow on your bed, a service has been done for you. Next, it's your turn to do a service for a family member. (You have 24 hours or less to do it in.) As the pillow makes it's way from one bed to the next, hopefully love abounds and service is done with a smile. :)

Hope you had a HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!