"I love you"

Isn't this just the cutest thing???

Your daycare took this photo of you and made us a Valentine's Day card. I just l-o-v-e it!

Will you be my Valentine?

I couldn't sleep last night because of all the stuff that's been going on. I decided to take my mind off things by creating personalized Valentine's Cards for your school classmates. I used a template that I saw online (http://camillestyles.com/valentines-day/diy-printable-valentines/) and modified it. You aren't allowed to bring candy to school for some reason so I wanted to make special cards for all your friends at school. I printed the cards and left an area for your name blank so that I could get you to handwrite your name. 

Since the weather has been terrible this Winter, we've been staying home a lot. Today was another snow day- a perfect day to get you to write your name on the cards. 

I got you to write your name on 19 cards.

You knew how to read all 19 names of your friends on the outside of the cards. 

Here's how it looks like all folded up.

Another view.

So proud of his work.

Here's how one of the cards look.

And opened up.

And here's a video of you writing your name on all the cards.

Happy heart day!

Look what you made me for Valentine's Day this year. I absolutely love it!

I kept asking you what you made me for Valentine's Day and you kept saying, "Heart, heart." 

I was actually pretty peeved at daddy on Valentine's Day because he didn't get me anything. I don't expect lavish gifts or anything, but a card and chocolates would have been nice. He said we didn't have money this year for gifts and he didn't want to buy me cheap chocolates. But it's still better than nothing!

He was saying that I didn't get him anything either, but I had cleaned up the house and made a nice dinner. Plus, I put both kids to sleep so that he would have a little break. I thought we would spend the rest of the night hanging out together, but he was cooped up in my office watching videos all night. I ended up watching TV downstairs by myself while eating your chocolates you gotten from your daycare friends. I felt so pathetic. It didn't help that when I got to bed he kicked me out when I told him to stop snoring. I ended up sleeping in your room. This morning, he didn't realize what had happened because when he saw me sleeping in your room he asked me why. He emailed me while at work telling me he was sorry and I let him have it. I explained all the things he did wrong on Valentine's Day. I guess he felt bad because he came home with a box of chocolates :-)

It doesn't take much to make someone feel special. I want you to remember that.

V-Day cards

One thing I love about being home is taking the time to make things- family Christmas cards, Advent Calendar and Valentine's Day cards. When mommy is working life gets to hectic that I don't have time to do all these things that I love to do. 

I've been noticing all the V-Day craft ideas popping up on Pinterest for the past couple of weeks. One of my favourite ideas was from Sally J Shim. I decided to rework her idea to make it my own. I knew I wanted to incorporate your thumb prints on the cards so I tried a few ideas. In the end, I settled on the cards above. I used Hershey Kisses instead of the heart candies that Sally used.

You didn't know why you were making heart thumb prints yesterday night.
I tried several different colours of my stamp pads and settled on the red colour.

You hard at work.

I scanned my favourite heart shape that you had made and incorporated it onto my tic tac
toe cards. I also made sure to get all the names of your daycare friends/teachers before
I made these cards so that I could personalize them.

Printing it out on my new Epson Artisan 1430 printers (gift from daddy).

Here is the printed card sans that Hersheys chocolates.

I cut them all out and used white glue to glue the chocolates onto the cards.

I'm trying out a new web app called Vine. I created a 7 second loop video of the Valentine's Day card that I made.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dear Aidan,

Look at all the treats you got for Valentine's Day!

Daddy was criticizing me when I was making treat bags for your daycare classmates because he thought I was spending too much money and time on them, but he takes that all back now. It looks like all your classmates brought stuff for you too. Some, more fancy than others, but nonetheless they brought something. Too bad you can't eat some of these candies, but it's good for mommy! She loves sweets! Keke.

Valentine's Day party

Dear Aidan,

Daddy brought home a note from daycare on Thursday saying that your class was going to be having a Valentine's Day party on February 11 and that we should bring the cards (and treats if we wanted to) by February 9. Of course, I didn't want to buy a generic card pack. I wanted to make something more personal. Daddy didn't want me to spend a lot of money, but I get joy out of doing things like this so I just went with what I wanted to do. This morning I went to Michaels to pick up a few craft products. I love going to Michaels because I get so much inspiration from just walking through the aisles. I can literally spend a whole day there. I was planning on making my own cards, but I found these really cute Martha Stewart Valentine's Day cards that were in the clearance section. I decided to buy that and incorporate that into my treat bag that I'm going to give to all the kids in your class.

Here is the Martha Stewart Valentine's Day card set. I got it for $8.95? I think it was way more than that, but I got it on sale. It came with a card, an envelope, and a label sticker.

Here is the card all composed. I love how the backside of the envelope has a heart punched through it. When I was thinking of making my own cards I was going to buy a heart punch, but punches are so expensive so I thought this was a better route.

Look how cute it is! The little hearts on the labels- well the dark red ones at least- are shiny.

I made 16 cards. The card kit came with 18 cards so I have a few left over. I'm thinking that I can use this idea for a future project...

I also bought a Martha Stewart Valentine's Day stamp kit. I think that was also on clearance so I got it for a good price. I used the stamp that had 'Sealed with a Kiss' written on it and stamped it onto a pink textured paper that I had lying around. I then punched it with my punch. I'm going to be sticking this on the paper bag. You'll see how I executed it later on.

Here are all the treats that I bought for the treat bags.

I wrapped all the marshmallow hearts in white tissue paper and tied it with bakers twine.

I put the candy hearts in a clear plastic zip bag. All the treats- the marshmallow hearts, Hershey Hugs and Kisses, and candy hearts worked so well together. All the colours just went together. I was really happy with how it turned out.

Here is the 'Sealed with a Kiss' punch that I stuck on the paper flap.

I stuck the Valentine's Day cards on the front side of the bakers bag.

I sealed all the bags by sewing a zig zag pattern with my sewing machine.

I hope the kids like it. I had a lot of fun making these. I made an extra one for you so that you also had a treat bag for the party. :-)