My one vivid memory of Valentine's Day when I was a kid was the bitter disappointment that my mom would not be buying store-bought valentines--we had to make them by hand. (Keep in mind this was the 80's, the era of consumerism. The sweet hand-made Etsy sites had not even been envisioned--but we were poor and there were a lot of kids). It might have been acceptable if we had been given some cute paper, stickers, markers, glitter and such, but no... my mom pointed to the roll of butcher paper, handed us some dull scissors and kindly suggested cutting out hearts and scrawling some sweet message. If my daughter were to come home with the same ragged, home-made heart, I would think it was the cutest, sweetest thing on earth. But as a kid, giving those away, I was MOR. TI. FIED!!!! I was embarrassed to even put my name on it (plus, my parents didn't buy candy to accompany them, which all parents know = double mortification.)
So this year, much to my own surprise, instead of buying store-bought Valentines, I decided I wanted to face my fear of home-made crafties and make my daughter's Valentines. You surely must realize this is more for me than for her, she is too young to really help much yet and she doesn't really even get what V-day is. I bought some cute paper and some lacy heart doilies (I hate that word) and heart-shaped cookie-cutters (cuz who can free-hand a perfect heart?) some cute stickers, some envelopes and some SweetTarts and got busy with the scissors and glue.
This is what I started with:
And this is how they turned out:
They were a little cuter in my head, but I think they turned out ok. At least they don't have Dora-the bilingual-my-a$$-Explorer or some GD fairy princess.
I feel a little vindicated, finally a home-made heart I can be proud of...
5 comments:
Those are the cutest! The only crafty thing I did for this Valentine's Day was buy a red basket and stick some foam letters of my child's name to the side. Yep, I'm that crafty. You did a fantastic job!
Josh and I are crackin' up! We love reading your blog. You're so funny! Your homemade Valentine's looked so pretty. We hope you have a great Valentine's day. Love, Josh and Danielle.
Nice going! They look totally professional.
I'm having the opposite feeling - I've done hand-made valentines for the last three years and this year I'm *this* close to going and buying the fairy princess version from Walgreens.
I'm crafted out.
Those are so beautiful. I absolutely love them. Great post. This is the part of valentines day I love--the youthful innocence of valentines cards, rather than the schmaltzy romantic crap we're force fed. Happy Valentines Day.
Aw, you rock the crafty mom thing. They are really cute.
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