Love is in the Air

Whoops.  I know I'm a day late with this but who doesn't like love?

For some reason I decided this year that we were going to do some serious Valentines crafting and cooking. 

Of course I used pinterest to come up with the idea for Finley's valentines.
Since this was her first year in "school" she had no idea what the concept of Valentines day was which was fun.  We decided to do something that didn't include candy just in case there were issues with allergies and such.  The original idea came from here but we did it a little different.  I got a big tub of animals from amazon which worked out perfect.  Finley helped by cutting out the little hearts, picking which animals to put in the bags, and writing her name on the back.  She actually got tired of writing her name after the 6th one so I had to finish for her.

After we finished the Valentines I decided that Finley needed a special bag to carry all of them to school in.  Completely unnecessary but I just couldn't help myself.  I knew what I wanted the bag to look like so I just came up with the pattern and sewed it together.  To my surprise it came out really cute. 

 

Here is Finley all ready to go to school with her valentines.

I couldn't stop at one bag so I had to make one for Finley's best friend Jude too.  Yes I know it's a purse and he's a boy.  He does have a little sister who I am sure can use the purse if he is willing to give it up.

I saw this idea in Family Fun magazine and knew it would be perfect to make to put in Jude's bag.  Finley and I had fun picking out which color nose, tails, and eyes each one was going to have.  They suggested using craft glue but I used hot glue since it is a little quicker.

I also wanted to make sugar cookies so we could decorate them with fun frosting and sprinkles.  This is where the Valentine crafting went a bit wrong.  I made the royal icing a little too thin so it ended up dripping off the edges of the cookies.  They don't look pretty but they taste good and Matt and Finley had a ton of fun decorating them.

The one on the right piled high with sprinkles was Finley's favorite.

Lastly, Matt helped me make some Valentine treats for his kids at school.  They aren't supposed to do candy so I found this idea on pinterest.  It does have candy but it also has popcorn.  That's healthy right?  Her ingredient and yield amount were pretty vague so I just kind of winged it with 2 bags of m&m's, 3 bags of candy melts, and 3 big pots of popcorn.  It actually ended up being the perfect amount to fill up 27 little bags. 

Matt said the kids were excited just to see it was popcorn.  They were super surprised when they figured out it was coated with candy.  We also ate a fair amount of it while we were making it.  It was super good.