- Don’t listen to what they say about Valentines, we know it’s ALL ABOUT THE CANDY anyway!
The Princess recently announced that we should hand make all twenty three of her Valentines this year. Aw, doesn’t that sound nice?
What do you mean “WE”, little girl?
Seriously, I was really on board. Making your own Valentines saves money, right? Therefore it’s totally worth it. Yes, we were going to totally rock the homemade Valentine world this year!
After perusing online for awhile and finding out that my child pretty much wants everything on the internet, she settled upon making 23 of the paper owls in the picture below for her classmates. Because they were “soooooo cuuuuuuuute”! (her words)
http://KidsActivitiesBlog has great step by step instructions on how to make these cute little owls. So simple and cute, right????
Before we proceed, keep in mind that this little girl always has her very own ideas of how she wants things…
After said conversation I visited the dollar spot at Target and purchased a $1 package of scrapbook paper and some glue sticks. Her plan also included not putting holes in the bottom for straws or suckers. We planned to make feet for our little owls. Because we can’t give candy, we must give FRUIT SNACKS! FRUIT SNACKS that are shaped like hearts!
(We totally CAN give candy, she just doesn’t want to).
The instructions said to make circles on the paper, and the blogger had simply used a cup to trace the circles. So I grabbed the first cup I saw, which was The Princess’s heart cup, and hurriedly made circles, and then cut them out. Doing this used up about half of the scrapbook paper.
This was when I realized that these were going to be teeny tiny little owls. Normal people would trace around an adult cup. ADD people trace around the first cup they find that isn’t dirty. The cup I grabbed happened to be her favorite. And small, very small.
She also set her heart on using google eyes instead of making the eyes out of paper. I guess maybe I should have bought some more eyes! It became apparently quite quickly that the eyes we had were either gigantic or teeny. Nothing in between that wasn’t completely goofy. The Princess was very disappointed in this. Instead I showed her how to make the eyes out of paper circles like in the picture. She was not very impressed.
And why write your own cute little sayings when you managed to pick up a bunch of conversation heart stickers last year in the Valentine Clearance? So now instead of an owl with a note that says “I think you’re a HOOT!” or -insert owl reference here-, we have an owl with a heart emblazoned with the word “Kisses” on its tummy, holding on to a bag of heart shaped fruit snacks for dear life.
So after an extended period of cutting and folding, and making eyes, the Princess decided she was done. Or rather, I was done. How many had we made? One. I had made just one little owl for her as an example. She snatched it and fled to her room to make it a place to sleep. She is going to keep it and name it “Kisses”.
Here is our poor “Kisses” the owl, rescued from the Princess’s bedroom while she slept. I’m not sure how Kisses got so darn dirty.
So, will the Princess actually start making her owls for her friends? Will we have future episodes where The Princess decides to keep going forward with Operation Valentine’s Owls? Or perhaps a post about me running frantically to the store to grab one of the two boxes of Valentines that are left on the 11th hour of Vday?
It would have been so much simpler if I had just showed her all of the character Valentines there were while we were at Target. But no, I had to encourage her creativity! What is WRONG with me?
The Professor, on the other hand, was perfectly happy with whatever. I brought him home a box of Skylanders Valentines and he was set.
So, several days after the fact, just how IS our little owl project going?
Guess what? She told me to go to Wal-Mart and pick her up a box of My Little Pony Equestria Girl Valentines… Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Some of our perusing for ideas resulted in seeing some ridiculously cute stuff. Just hook me up with this site, I’ll order all of my Valentines’ gifts and be on my merry little way…
http://www.personalcreations.com/
Aren’t these just the cutest things ever? And I’m the mean mom who gave my kids weird names. What’s wrong with that? You can’t just walk into a store and find personalized stuff for them. Damn me. http://www.personalcreations.com/valentines-gifts-kids-PVALKID
I thought it wise to mention that I did not receive any sort of compensation for plugging Personal Creations and Kids Activities Blog, other than a nice virtual high five. That and the reaffirmation that my daughter wants everything cute that was ever made.
The Sadder But Wiser Girl 
I am the older version of your daughter. 😀 I keep telling myself that this year, we’re just buying valentines. I will not attempt another half-assed project and then go to the store at 10pm the night before to get store bought. 😀
HA HA! I really thought she wanted to do it! Well, lesson learned I guess. Next year we’ll see…
Yup. The best laid plans, right? But YOU absolutely get points for encouraging your kid’s creativity, whether you end up with one or 23 homemade Owl Valentines. I’m hoping for the 23, but have a feeling that you are psychic about heading to Target again at the 11th hour!!
Yep!
Yees, DIY’ing Valentines sounds like the kind of fun I wouldn’t survive. I would totally grab the first glass I found that wasn’t dirty either. I enjoy your writing so much, it just makes me super happy 😀
Thank you Katia-you can see how wonderful I have been about responding to these great comments too. UGH! So much going on right now. I’ll try to get back to being somewhat entertaining Sarah very soon!
People hand make valentines??? when they’re only like $2.50 for 32 of them at Target? What is this world coming to???
But I wanted to be different…. 😉
With six kids, we ran the gamut. From store-bought to homemade to baked to forgotten-till-the-last-minute-and-whipped-up-out-of-whatever-was-lying-around. Now the next generation has started. We grabbed a package of ‘princess’ valentines at the dollar store yesterday. Let the games begin!
Nothing wrong with princess valentines!
And this is why I never ever do crafts. 😉 but I’m proud of you! A for effort!
It was a pretty good effort, I just wish I hadn’t cut all that stuff out beforehand. I’ll know better next time!
I applaud your efforts, mama. I am the anti-craft. I started sweating just imagining make our own Valentines. But owls are seriously my favorite- I need to try to find some store-bought owl valentines, now! 🙂 Your kiddo and her owl are adorable. For real.
I know they have them, I just don’t think they’re in with the regular kid Valentines. I made one for her, it turned out pretty cute.
HAHAHA I was totally thinking OMG you freaking ROCK motherhood so much better than I do (which you do) but then I saw the comments above me and realize I’m not the only craft-sucker. We bought cheap Spiderman and Batman valentines at Target. Ok wait. Crap. My friend, who was at Target today, IM’d me that they had those and asked if I wanted her to buy them. I said yes.
It’s ok to be a craft sucker. It’s GREAT to be a craft sucker. Remember, Craft Fail loves us when we fail! 😀
I hate that. Luckily I have learned Isaiah’s follow through is zero when it comes to pretty much everything that’s his idea. Or mine for that matter. “We” were going to make Rolo brownies, but I decided to say we could only make them if he helped. So he said “oh, well then forget it.” Crap, mama wanted some Rolo brownies, but we have to stick to our guns, right?
Just think how much faster scrawling a name on My Little Pony will be.
And it was, because according to the note that came home, the kids were to do all of the writing on the cards!
Those are adorable. You’re a better mom than me. My son went with the box too. I spent 3 dollars and they have tattoos.
My kids don’t really care for the tattoos, but a lot of kids do!
the 1 owl you did is sooo cute. the professors cousin clay got the same skylanders valentines for his class, great minds think alike. we did get creative and make a valentines box for school which is a Thor’s hammer. although to be honest i didn’t do most of the work, Hannah did. hope you have a great valentines day.
Lucky you to have Hannah to help out! 😀 Hope to see you guys sometime soon! This weather needs to GO AWAY!
More kids crafty Valentine’s Day stuff. I do not understand….I may have mentioned this before. Thanks for hooking up to the Hump Day Hook Up
You’re a cool mom. Figures that it’s the girl who wants a big production for V-Day gifts and the boy just grabs a box of anything and is happy with that. LOL!