making valentines

Every year, I say I am just going to buy valentines for the kids and then every year I end up seeing something cute or having a great idea myself and making them. It always takes longer than I anticipate, but in the end, they turn out great and I hope the kids have great memories of making them and giving them out.

So this year, I intended only to make them for the oldest (who is 11 and in 6th grade) because he has a small class and between kids and teachers, there were only 10 required. Let's hear it for a private school!

So I found these adorable fake ipods in the Family Fun magazine and since my oldest is a boy and his class is all boys, I wanted to steer clear of anything too mushy and this seemed like the perfect answer. Then, when my middle son heard about it, he wanted them too. Now, he has a larger class (5th grade) but I wanted the teacher and the other kids and moms to know I was crafty, so I thought “What the heck?” And then, since I was going to make them for the older 2 kids, I figured I HAD to make them for the youngest, although the pre-school kids would not really be into the ipods, so I made a modified version of this other one I saw in the same issue of the magazine.

All told, I ended up making 50 valentines by hand and helping with 2 covered shoeboxes to hold them. I did finish by the Wednesday before, so I was done a full day in advance.