Boys Valentine Airplane Tee

I made THIS cute dress for my daughter for Valentine's Day and was trying to find something cool to make for my son.  Ruffly hearts were just not going to cut it for an 8 year old (almost) boy . 

A while ago I found THIS neat shirt on Pinterest, and it became my inspiration for this project.

I made the airplane do a heart loop.  Instant Valentine tee.  An, 8 year old approved, cool, Valentine tee.  YES!

The airplane is made from off white cotton fabric (about 8 pieces stacked together), stitched along the edge for detail to make it look like a paper airplane.  And I hand stitched the airplane's heart loop with black embroidery thread.  This project only took about 30 minutes to complete and didn't cost me anything since we used a plain red tee we already had and I already had the fabric and thread on hand.



Girl's Ruffled Heart Valentine's Day Dress

Wow, it's been like forever since I've posted here at the blog!  Life got hectic and the blog had to be pushed to the back burner.  But with life settling into a better groove, I set a goal for this new year to give a little bit of my time back to blogging.  So, if you've stuck around this long, you might as well stick around a little longer, to see what new crafty adventures I have up my sleeve.

First up, is this adorable ruffled heart dress I made for my daughter for Valentine's Day.  I found the idea on Pinterest.  Don't you just love that place?  I could wallow away the hours pinning.  And although I pin a lot of stuff, I feel like I've been doing a pretty good job at actually doing projects that I pin.  For every 100 projects that I pin, I probably make 1.  That's good, right?  Just say it's good!  :)

So anyway, I saw THIS cute tutorial for making a ruffled heart dress.  Easy to follow instructions and clear pictures to show you step by step what to do.  I was not planning on making the dress, but I did have a denim jumper that needed a little TLC.  It was just kind of blah and I thought that adding the ruffled heart to this jumper would be just the thing to make it fun to wear again.  I used an old red tee for the ruffled heart, the hem of the red tee for the belt and a red chiffon layer from an old dress to add to the bottom of the jumper (it was a little on the short side, so this helped with the length). 

I think it took about an hour to complete.  Now, we have a cute dress to wear for Valentine's Day and were able to repurpose a piece of clothing.

By the way, if you're interested, you can follow me on Pinterest HERE!

Simple Teacher Gift

We made this simple teacher gift last year for Valentine's Day.  We traced my daughter's hands on some cardstock and cut them out.  Then, we attached them to a small tube of hand lotion.  Before attaching them, we wrote "Ms. Mollie, you deserve a hand!" on the front and "Love" on the back.

 

Sweet and Salty Treat

This is a really simple and tasty treat you can make in a matter of minutes.  It's the perfect quick treat for teachers, a class party, or yourself!

For this tasty treat you will need pretzels (I found these waffle shaped one work really well), Hershey Kisses and M&Ms.  Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.  Spread the pretzels onto a cookie sheet.

 

Unwrap and place one Hershey Kiss onto each pretzel, then put the cookie sheet into the oven for about 3 minutes.

 

Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and immediately press one M&M onto each softened Hershey Kiss, then place in the refrigerator to cool and set, preferably over night.

 

These are a really tasty treat - like chocolate covered pretzels without all the work of dipping.  You could easily adapt this treat to other holidays by using different colored M&Ms.  Enjoy!



Valentine Wreath

I wanted to make a new Valentine's Day wreath and started with this wire form.

I used some leftover red garland from Christmas and wrapped it around the wire form.

 

Next, I cut some heart shapes out of cardboard (I just used old cereal boxes), and some strips of fabric about 1 inch wide.

I used hot glue to keep the fabric in place as I started, and wrapped the fabric strip around the heart, using hot glue again to secure the end piece.

I did pink, white and red hearts.  This is a close up of one of the larger red hearts.

I used some of the same fabric to tie the hearts to the wreath (the tie is in the back) and used another fabric strip to hang the larger heart in the center of the wreath.  I added a piece of heart ribbon for hanging.

I'm really happy with how it turned out - it makes me smile!

Sweet Bracelet

I made THIS cute candy bracelet at Halloween time using candy pumpkins and it was a big hit!  Not only was it cute, but tasty too!  So I set off this year to find the right kind of candy to make another one for Valentine's Day.

I found these gummy hearts by Sweetarts and they worked out really well!

I started by stringing the gummy hearts onto a piece of thread.  Be patient - these gummy hearts are pretty sticky and your needle will get kind of gunked up.  Just keep a wet paper towel on hand to wipe down your needle if it gets too hard to string them.

When I thought we were at the right size, I tied off the thread and tied white curling ribbon between each heart and curled it.  Cute to wear and even more fun to eat!

 

Valentines for Kids, Part 1

Valentine's Day is so much fun!  This is a great time to let your kids get creative.  With some basic craft supplies, your kids can make some colorful and loving Valentines of their own.  Some supplies we like to use are:

• construction paper or cardstock
• glitter glue
• stickers
• markers/crayons/colored pencils/oil pastels
• doilies
• craft scissors (with fancy cutting edges)
• yarn/embroidery thread/ribbon/curling ribbon
• pony beads and buttons

Since my kids have started school, we try to get crafty with our Valentines, instead of buying the prepackaged Valentines at the store.

Last year in kindergarten, we made these Valentines for my son's class.  We cut out hearts from red construction paper, punched two holes, and slipped a glow stick through.  We added the little message, "Friend, you make my heart glow!"  We saw this idea in Family Fun magazine.

When my daughter was in preschool last year, we made up these goodie bags as Valentines.  Inside the bag we put Teddy Graham crackers and gummi bears.  We tied off the bag with pretty curling ribbon and added a note saying, "Bear Hugs from _____!"  Another idea from Family Fun.

Be on the lookout for more kid valentines ideas coming your way!

Sock Cupcake

While surfing around in bloggy land, I came across THIS cute idea for Valentine's Day.  I decided I had to give this a try for my son's teacher.  I bought a pair of fuzzy socks from Target.  Starting at the top, I rolled the socks all the way to the toe and secured them with a rubberband.

Next, I traced and cut out a cupcake liner template.  You can find free templates online.

 

I placed the rolled socks inside the liner, pulling and fluffing as needed to have the socks fill the liner, and tucked a red pom pom into one of the top layers like a cherry.

Last, I placed the sock cupcake inside a treat bag and added a gift tag saying, "This cupcake treat is not to eat, but "baked" with love to warm your feet!"  We are also including a real baked treat along with our sock cupcake.

Pattern Hearts

Since we are stuck at home for another snow/ice day, I thought we would work on some more Valentine crafts.  I found these cute dot printables over at DLTK.  You can use bingo markers or dot painters to fill in the dots.  But, since we didn't have either, we used dot stickers instead.

We chose the heart and decided to use our dots to create a pattern.  So, after the kids colored their hearts, they used the dot stickers to create a pattern around their heart.  My daughter is getting really good with patterns so this was good practice for her.  My son has had patterns down for a while now, so I challenged him to make a longer one.

I think they turned out really cute!  The kids even added another row of patterns to the inside of their hearts, then cut them out.

 

Valentine Fleece Boa Scarf

I recently saw these adorable fleece boa scarves over at my friend Laura's blog, Come Together Kids.  She provided a great tutorial on how to make these, so I knew I would have to give it a try.  I decided to make one for Valentine's Day, in red and white.  My daughter wanted to use hers for dress up play. 

I started off with 3 pieces of lightweight cotton fleece, 2 red and 1 white.  Each piece was 6 inches wide and 48 inches long. 

I made two straight stitches down the middle of all three pieces.

Then, using my rotary cutter, I cut a one inch fringe on each side.

This turned out so cute and was so easy to make!  Thanks again Laura for sharing your tutorial with us!

Love Plaque

I had some heart garland and mini chalkboards that I picked up from the Dollar Store.  I wanted to make a cute decoration for Valentine's Day and came up with this cute love plaque.

I started by cutting the heart garland apart, so I had individual hearts.  Using my glue gun, I glued the tiny hearts to the mini chalkboards in the shape of the letters L, O, V, and E.  I attached the mini chalkboards together with a strip of ribbon running down the back.  I added a ribbon loop at the top for hanging, and small pink roses to the mini chalkboards for a little extra decoration.  I really like how this turned out!



Sharing this craft at the following blogs:

Making the World Cuter
Skip to My Lou
Keeping it Simple
Sew Can Do
C.R.A.F.T.
Craft-O-Maniac
Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Simpsonized Crafts and Then Some!
Super Stinky Boys
Tip Junkie

Heart Hair

Before I got my daughter's hair cut, it was pretty long.  And last year, she allowed me to play with her hair.  For Valentine's Day, we made these cute heart hair styles, thanks to some inspiration from The Story of a Princess and Her Hair blog.  If you haven't checked out this blog before, be sure you do.  She has so many cute hairstyles to try, with instructions!

Since we have shorter hair now, we'll have to see what cute style we can come up with this year.  Happy Valentine's Day!

Recycled Valentine Crayons

I bought these silicone heart shaped trays from the Target dollar bins a few years ago.  I'm pretty sure I've seen them at our Dollar Store too.  These were perfect for making heart shaped recycled crayons for Valentine's Day.

The first thing you need to do is set your oven to preheat to 200 degrees.  While the oven is preheating, choose the colors you want to use for your crayons.  The better quality of the crayon, the better it will melt and hold together.  Peel the paper from your crayons and break them into small pieces.

Place the broken crayons, into the tray.  You can group like colors together or mix them.

Place the silicone trays onto a cookie sheet and bake for about 15-20 minutes, keeping a careful eye on the melting process.  When the crayons look fully melted, remove them from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes, then pop them out of the mold.

I used glue dots to attach them to small cardstock cards as Valentine's for my daughter's preschool class.  We also put some in a goodie bag, tied off with ribbon, to give to the teacher for the class to use.

Valentine Table Display

I finally got all of my Christmas decorations put away and quickly pulled out my Valentine's Day decorations.  I only have a few items, but really enjoy the simplicity that the colors of this holiday bring, especially during the dreary winter.

I had some artificial roses left over from a project I never started, so I finally put them to good use.  I used these styrofoam cubes (purchased for yet another project never started) to create a simple table display.

The roses were already trimmed from the bunch they came on and had a two inch stem.  I pushed them into the cube, making three rows of three flowers.  I put all the white roses in one cube, all the pink in another and all the red in another. 

 

I wanted to group these together, so I first rubberbanded them, then used masking tape to hold the three cubes together.

 

And last, I used a piece of scrap faux leather fabric to wrap around the styrofoam cubes, and added some coordinating ribbon for a neat finish.  I just used hot glue to attach the fabric and ribbon.  I love the way this simple display turned out!