Daddy's Valentine's Card

Today we made Daddy a Valentine's Day card. The kids glued hearts left over from our heart art on a posterboard heart and told me all the reasons why they loved daddy, so I could write it down for them. They are so excited to give it to him.

Valentine's Day Cookies

This is a recipe based on the one I found here.

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 3/4 cups of all purpose flour

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla and mix until smooth. Add the cream. Next add the flour and baking powder and mix into the mixture. Cover the dough and chill for 2 to 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters and place them 1 inch apart on the baking sheets covered with parchment paper, a silpat, or greased with butter. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until bottoms and edges of cookies are light brown. Remove from baking sheet and cool on wire racks.

Then I used the icing that we used for our Christmas cookies from my friend Jenn's recipe.

Basic icing:
4 cups of confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup of unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup of heavy cream
2 tsp. vanilla

I was feeling a little under the weather tonight, but making these sure did perk me up. Perhaps it was all the sugar in the air. :)

Valentine Stamps

We made some stamps out of our foam stickers. We stuck the stickers to some toy blocks we had and then we put them in the ink pad and stamped some paper that we are going to use as wrapping paper for Daddy's Valentine's Day presents. They turned out really well and we were able to take the stickers off and clean the blocks up to throw back in the block box. I can only hope that the kids will be able to keep the secret about what we got Daddy. ;)

Supplies needed:

foam stickers

blocks

paper

ink pads

Valentine Dessert Pizza

The kids loved every bit of this process. We used frozen bread dough for the crust (thawed in the refrigerator).

Then we divided the bread dough into 4 parts. The kids smashed and flattened out their part and I cut them into hearts. I lightly greased a cookie sheet and put the dough in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes or so. Just until the tops were lightly golden brown.

Then we spread peanut butter over the entire thing and the kids put semi sweet chocolate chips, peanut butter/chocolate swirled chips, m & ms, and marshmallows. Then I put them in the oven for a couple of minutes just until the marshmallows got soft and all the other toppings were ooey gooey. One heart of their dessert pizza will last them all week. You certainly can make more hearts so that they are more of an individual serving, but I took the easy way out. :)

Valentine Heart Flowers

We used our trusty foam stickers to trace on some cardstock. The we cut them out and stuck a lollipop through. These are GREAT to hand out with cards on Valentine's Day.

Supplies Needed:

card stock

suckers

Heart Sun Catchers

We made some heart sun catchers today using laminating sheets. You could also use contact paper, but I have found that these are a little bit easier to work with. I cut out a heart shape and then cut out the inside of the heart, leaving about 1/2 an inch border. Then I stuck the heart on the laminating sheet and cut off the excess around the heart. Then the kids stuck little squares of tissue paper all over them, completely covering it. I then punched a hole in the top and tied some cording so we could hang it.

Supplies needed:

laminating sheets (or contact paper)

tissue paper

colored paper for heart

Secret Valentine messages

I used a white crayon (try to avoid the washable ones) to write on some white paper and told the kids I had written them a secret message. They were blown away when they started painting and saw the message. You can't really see the message in the picture, but it was there. They wanted to draw pictures with the crayons and give each other secret messages. It was really cute.

Supplies needed:
white paper
white crayon
water color paint
brushes

Valentine Shirt

My daughter wanted to have a Valentine shirt, so we pulled out the sponges, brushes, paint and plain white T-Shirt (we bought several at Michael's when they were $2 a piece). We dipped heart shaped sponges in the paint and then pressed them on the shirt. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SOMETHING IN THE SHIRT SO IT DOES NOT GO THROUGH TO THE OTHER SIDE, can you tell I have done it before ;). We just put a magazine inside the shirt. Then we used the brush to get any white spots covered. After our 3 hearts were on the shirt, I got a brush and outlined the hearts in black.

Make sure you read the directions on your fabric paint. Ours says you can't wash it for 72 hours. We love painting shirts. We seem to do it all the time. She looks so cute with this shirt over her red thermal long sleeved shirt.

Supplies needed:

Shirt

fabric paint

brushes

sponges

Valentine Bugs Felt Board

Using the boards and shapes that we already made from our Winter Felt Friends, I cut out a bunch of hearts in different sizes and let the kids loose with them. At first, they weren't sure what to make, but when I suggested bugs, a lightbulb went off and there was no stopping them. They spent over an hour playing with their felt boards today. They really love them.

Valentine flowers that last FOREVER!

We decorated a piece of paper with foam stickers and glued it around a toilet paper roll. We cut some hearts out of construction paper and pushed them onto a pipe cleaner and put a button or a bead on the top. Then we pushed some leaves on to make them look more full. The flowers will be too heavy to keep the "vase" upright, so you will need to weigh it down somehow. We put a handfull of beads in the bottom. Voila! These flowers will last a lot longer than any other you will receive. Too cute!!!

Supplies needed:

construction paper

toilet paper roll

heart stickers

pipe cleaners

buttons or beads

Valentine Treasure Hunt

I found these cute little wooden boxes at Michael's for $.50 each and I had the kids decorate their treasure boxes with their wood markers. Then I got some conversation hearts and wrapped them in foil (to look like treasure) and hid them. They went treasure hunting A LOT today. Even after the conversation heart candy was gone, they put pretend coins from their cash register in them and hid them for each other to find. We played hotter and colder in order to help find them and then we tried the treasure hunt by giving 3 clues to find them throughout the entire house. It was a lot of fun!

Heart Art

This project was so exciting for my daughter. She will be 3 in March and we spent almost an hour on this. My son wasn't as interested, but still had some fun.

I cut out a slew of hearts of different sizes and colors. My daughter and I sorted them into different piles by color.

Then I let them work on their art! My son put hearts on his page representing certain people in our family. He added faces or hearts representing something about that person. I added the cat in the middle because, like it or not, she is in our family too. My son and the cat don't get along very well together. :)

My daughter went to town! We had so much fun. We had our own little lesson and she did so well! We named colors, counted, and talked about bigger and smaller. I would tell her to do some things like, "Put this small blue heart on a bigger yellow one." We had a lot of fun and we did this for a long time. She loved it!!

Supplies needed:

scissors

construction paper or colored copy paper

glue

poster board

Valentine Caterpillar

We have made these caterpillars before. The kids love playing with egg cartons and we even have a book that has a bunch of egg carton projects in it. Here we made them Valentine caterpillars since they have the added hearts on top. The pipe cleaners are really easy to stick through the egg carton and they stay in place well once you have them where you want them.

Supplies needed:

egg carton

paint

brushes

googley eyes

pipe cleaners

beads

glue

Foam heart stickers (optional)

Valentine Bug Magnet

This little love bug turned out so cute. We stuck the wings on, which was easy since ours were stickers. You could very well cut out your own hearts from craft foam. Then we made the antenae and put the beads on the end and glued them on as well as the googley eyes. Finally, we put a magnet on the back so that we could put it on our fridge to clip things on.

Supplies needed:

glue or glue gun

pipe cleaner

clothes pins

Foam hearts (ours were stickers)

googley eyes

beads

magnet

Valentine's Day Mobile

We have been taking a snowman break and focusing on Valentine's Day. The temperatures are below zero and school around here is cancelled because of the cold. It is time to focus on things that will warm your heart....get it...heart? HAHA!!

The first thing we did to make our mobiles was turn hand prints into hearts on some craft foam. Then I cut out a heart shape around it and punched some holes in the bottom.

Then we made finger print hearts using ink pads on some little foam hearts (we did both sides). Then I punched some holes in them and attached the little hearts to the big heart with yarn.

Too Cute!

Supplies needed:

craft foam

foam hearts (or you can just cut some from the craft foam)

yarn

paint

brush

ink pad

hole puncher

Heart Crayons

I found this silicon heart mold in the Target dollar aisle! I was so excited when I found them! Using the same method I did before, here are some cute little heart crayons. My kiddos will love them! They would also be super cute in a clear bag attached to Valentine's Day cards for kids' classes.

Home Made Valentine Gifts

Here a couple of Valentine's Day gifts ideas:

We did this one last year (pre-blog). We got some plain terra cotta pots and used some paint pens and felt heart stickers to decorate it. Then we put a cute little plant in it from the store. Notice there is no plant in it now. Ours didn't stand a chance. I am just not good with indoor plants. :)

This year we made these cute frames. Happy early Valentine's Day honey!

I put a close up of each child in their frame. Sooooo cute.

Here, we just bought an unfinished frame from Michael's and used acrylic paint. When the paint dried, they put some foam heart stickers on them. My son wanted something written on it, so we personalized it a little bit with a cute little message from each of them.