Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is big around here.  Jesse and I started dating (okay, kissed...) on Valentine's Day fifteen years ago.  (Fifteen years ago!)  And so we have always celebrated.  And then, it's a lot of fun to prepare for, when things are a bit bleak and grey.  Elsa and David worked on Valentines for several days.  I thought we might do a bunch of heart stamping for their classroom Valentine's, but they had other ideas.  They each made a kind of smorgasbord of valentines.  Some heart butterflies, some painted hearts, some doilies with stickers, some glittery creations.  My house was covered with glitter--I did discover that Elsa was sprinkling glitter in her and David's hair, and calling it fairly dust...great. 

And then, we made these:

Hmmm...these are hard to see, and it sure does make me realize that the windows are totally gross.  I remember when we got these new windows (we had some lead issues in this 1917 house) I had a moment of thinking how excited I was that they would be easy to clean.  I quickly got a hold of myself however, and you guessed it, I don't clean them--at least not the outside.  But, anyway, the window hearts--we made them last year, and I love them.  You just grate up pink, white, and red crayons, but them between two sheets of wax paper, and iron them.  Then cut out hearts.  They are really pretty--I have to admit that in totally un-eco fashion, I actually bought some crayons to make them.  For some reason, crayons are not our craft medium of choice--we all prefer colored pencils and markers, so we had no leftover crayons-we used them last year.  Then we gave them out to the neighborhood, which was great fun.

I made this for David:

I used pipe cleaners for the body, a first for me, and then wrapped roving all around it and needle felted it. 

I made this for Elsa:

Elsa made Daddy and me some beautiful valentines--check the blog header.  David made some too, although he is more of the give them immediately school of thought. 

We read lots of valentine stories and it was a nice, sweet day.