Valentines Details

Valentine sweetness is all in the details.

This year, we decided to create handmade Valentines for the girls' classes. We made little owls out of hearts with a simple body, heart shaped wings, heart feet, a heart beak and big, round eyes. The girls cut out all the bodies themselves out of solid cardstock and I cut the wings and beaks and feet out of various printed papers that we had on hand. The eye balls were a breeze with the loan of my friend's Cricut -- which seriously has me so spoiled that I cannot imagine doing projects without it again, and I may need to secure myself such a device come the holidays this year.

The girls glued them together entirely on their own and loaded the owls into clear cellophane bags with a treat and a tag tied on that said something like: "Owl always love you" or "Whoooo's Maggie's favorite Valentine?"

We also made owl Valentine boxes to coordinate with our cards. Maggie and Elsie Jane did not technically need one of their own, but since Mia (and her friend Sarah) was making one, they could not be left out.

I cut the tops of the boxes into an arc and then used packing tape to re-attach the strip from the top edge. Then, I cut a heart out of the middle and covered the whole thing with canvas scraps from my most efficiently used drop cloth. The girls and I worked together to hot glue on feathers and eyes and wings and beaks which they cut out. In the end, they turned out pretty awesome!

For my family this year I made home-made pink fortune cookies using this recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/fortune-cookies-so-easy/. They are really tasty -- way better than what you get at a Chinese restaurant and really easy. You just spoon the batter onto parchment paper and bake about four of them at a time for about 6 minutes. When they are still hot you have to work fast to insert the fortune, fold them in half, fold them over again and place them in a cupcake tin to cool in the right shape. When they were cool, I dipped the edges in melted semisweet chocolate and then in unsweeted, natural coconut flakes. Oh, they tasted so good. And my girls and Jeffrey loved getting little individualized love notes inside of each one. I also made some for the girls' teachers and our neighbors. They had notes saying: "We are FORTUNATE to have (friends / teachers / etc) like YOU."

The rest of Valentines Day at our house included pink crepes for breakfast with lemon juice and powdered sugar inside and fresh raspberry sauce drizzled on top in the shape of a heart, our traditional "fancy" dinner with chicken cordon blue, dancing with Daddy, and small gifts.

One thing about having kids: Valentines has become all about the crafts -- between boxes, cards, baking, two parties at school, and wrapping little gifts -- I do not think I even had a romantic thought run through my head. Oh well. These years of childhood delight over every holiday won't last long enough for me anyway.