Valentine's Decor

Things were looking a little sparse around here after taking down all of the Christmas decor, so I was itching to start decorating for Valentine's Day. The only problem was that I had almost nothing in the way of Valentine's decor. I had one lonely pink teapot with red hearts and of course my Valentine's wreath. All of that changed with the use of some scrapbook paper and a trip to the Dollar Spot at Target. I made 2 different garlands for my house. One is the linked paper hearts, which I found on Pinterest. I decided to cut strips of paper in pink and red and alternated colors to create a colorful garland to drape from the hutch in my dining room.

Next I cut out paper hearts using different pastel colored papers. I looked up and wrote different messages such as the ones you would find on conversation hearts, my favorite candy! I attached the hearts to a length of red ribbon and draped it from the fireplace mantle.
Though the hearts helped to make it a little more festive, the mantle was still missing something. I hit up the Target Dollar Spot and purchased 4 mini mailboxes- one for each member of our family. I also purchased the "LOVE" blocks and added them to my mantle display.

Finally, I purchased the set of 3 I heart U containers from Target and added them to our dining room mantle. They looked kind of plain, so I went back to the Dollar Store to find some flowers to put inside. I purchased flowers, but I also purchased a package of sparkle heart picks. I added the sparkle heart picks and they were perfect!

During my second trip to the Dollar Store, I also picked up a package of heart shaped doilies. I taped a few of them in each of our picture windows. Things were looking really good, but I knew that I had to stop! It was clear that my purchasing cheap Valentine decorations and placing them all over my house was becoming compulsive!
Thankfully, over the weekend, we tackled my daughter's homemade Valentine's for her Pre-school class. We had recently completed a project that I saw on Pinterest, multi-colored crayons. Though the Pinterest version was heart shaped, we used a small cupcake pan that I had on hand for ours. The pan made more than we would ever use, so I thought that giving them as Valentine's would be a perfect solution. I cut some card stock the same size as a plastic bag and had Reese go to work writing her name and adding stickers to each of the cards. I then printed, "Valentine, you color my world!" and stapled the bag with a crayon onto the card. Reese worked so hard and was so proud of her cards when she was finished.



We could have printed something fancy on the cards, but I love that Reese was in charge of the project and it looked like it came from her, not that a parent had made them for her.
For Valentine's Day, we had books for each of the kids at the table when they came down to their breakfast of heart shaped doughnuts. After work and pre-school, we had heart shaped pizza for dinner. After dinner I gave my husband his gift, a coupon book of dates for each month until the end of the year. Some of the dates are things that we can do with the kids and some are intended to be dates for just the two of us. Some of the dates will cost some money, but others will cost very little. I included a few things that we have talked about doing and never done, such as going to the drive-in and going to a comedy club. My husband remarked that it was one of the best gifts he has ever gotten. It was one of the best Valentine's Days that I have ever celebrated. I think that we made it special for both the kids and ourselves without going overboard or trying to make things perfect.