A Crafty Valentine's Day

Going to the store with B is a nightmare.  She is a terror.  And always ends up screaming/crying/yelling at me the entire drive home.  So I try to avoid it at all costs.  This time the cost was making homemade valentines because I forgot to pick some up on a previous weekend grocery run.

I've seen these photo cards floating around in cyberspace for the last several years.  I've successfully avoided them until now.  But I admit, they weren't as bad as I was anticipating.  In fact, they ended up being downright fun.

I dug out my backdrop stand and hung up a red blanket in front of the bay window.  It's supposed to be a breakfast nook, or whatever you call it, but we don't have any furniture to put there so it remains a gloriously empty space.  Perfect for projects like this.

Have I mentioned how much I love having lots of good light?  Well, I love it.  I also love the fact that I don't have to rearrange half of my furniture to access aforementioned good light.  Indoor photo shoots were always sort of a pain in my old house.  Maybe that's a large party of why these were so surprisingly enjoyable.

I just copied the poses that other creative souls have posted online for people like me to imitate, and then brightened the photos and added text in photoshop elements.  Easy peasy.  The clever wording was also stolen borrowed from cyberspace.  If you think they're too cheesy, blame them.

Making the dimensions right so they would print out two cards per 4x6 picture was a little tricky.  My printer kept cutting off the white border around the edge, so the finished product turned out a little smaller than I was planning.  Oh, well.

Classmates were getting free candy, I didn't think they'd care if that candy was covering my kid's face a little or that the hand and the sucker stick didn't quite match up.

I didn't really need to make any for K or S or B.  But B was such a ham and insisted on getting her share of time in front of my lens, so I went ahead and made some for her to share with her nursery class at church.  I think K and S were just in it because it was kind of clever and they liked the idea of eating giving out candy.

J wanted to break out of the mold and do something a little more boy friendly for the boys in his class.  He said it needed to include a turtle.  So we looked through his turtle photos from last fall and picked one.  Fortunately for us, there was a clever valentine turtle saying on the internet.  It sort of brings it all together.  

We had an extra bag of Hershey's Nuggets in the pantry, but the boys in my life both assured me that I couldn't use them on the card because it would make everyone that saw it immediately think of turtle poop.  And that was no kind of valentine wish.  Since we were giving these to little boys who probably think more like my own two male wierdos than like me, I considerately used snickers instead.

So, now that Valentine's Day is over, my sweet little photo cards are in the trash along with the candy wrappers taped to them.  Success.

My valentine was out of town all week.  So instead of spending time with him, I was dreaming up ways to use up my leftover candy canes.

The chocolate turned out a little odd, but the kids were still impressed.  They're easy to impress when sugar is involved.

We usually have a family party for Valentine's Day.  This was no exception even if we were missing someone.  I think the highlight of the night was the game we played with those conversation hearts.  We learned some interesting things.  S will ask herself to marry her.  K's first kiss will be from Ruger, our dog.  B will text me.  J will say, "Hey, babe!" to his best friend at school.  And R will have a very long list of true loves.

Sweet J, realizing that I would be all alone for Valentine's Day, spent several hours making this elaborate pop out card for me.  How I love my boy, even if he can't quite spell Mommy.

When it was time to get Shaggy from the airport, I whipped up this brownie beauty.  Brownies, marshmallows, chocolate chips, crushed candy canes, drizzled chocolate.  Hard to go wrong.  We ate half of it on the drive home, to the great dismay of our trusty babysitters.

I guess there is an upside to avoiding the store.  It encourages me to get creative with what I already have in stock.