A Baby Valentine

As we all know, Valentine's Day is tomorrow. We met up with Thomas' playgroup today and I realized that I should probably bring a little something for his first group of friends on Valentine's! So I whipped up these little tags this morning, bought some Yogurt Melts at store on the way to playgroup, and put them in a baggie with the note attached while sitting in the car in front of the host's house. Talk about waiting until the last minute! 

These were super easy to make (remember, I did this in the car!) and the kids loved them. Of course, they are only 13 months old so they are easy to please. Here is a blank one if you would like to make some just in the nick of time. 

Hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day tomorrow!

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Valentine's Day Tot School

Did you know that tomorrow is Valentine's Day?! :) Hope you have your Valentine's ready to hand out to your favorite loved ones. Well, we spent last week doing some Valentine's activities here with my favorite loved ones.

Matthew and I had some fun one-on-one time one day while John was at preschool. We started with playing with Valentine's themed window clings. He putting the clings on and off the window...over and over again! (We had just played with a new doctor kit, so he didn't want to part with the stethescope.)





I put some small erasers in plastic conversation hearts and Matthew enjoyed opening and closing the containers. Well, he enjoyed opening them all but couldn't quite get them closed again. I was surprised that this very simple activity kept him entertained for a long time!





I pulled out the formula container and heart picks from last year. Matthew did really well with this and could get the sticks in the holes without too much trouble. John also liked playing with this when he got home. It really irks him, though, that there are more holes than heart picks. He just REALLY wants everything to be nice and even!



He helped me address envelopes to send Valentine's to Nana, Grandma, and Grandpa.



I set up a little post office area, but didn't get a picture of it. I had a phone, cash register, stickers (stamps), address stamps, cards, and envelopes. We took some cards and put them in the mailbox. This was actually difficult since they cards had to be slanted to fit into the mailbox.



One of Matthew's favorite games was our 'Heart Hunt'. I 'hid' paper hearts in the living room for Matthew to find and put he them in his shopping cart. I didn't actually hide the hearts but rather placed them around the living room in plain sight. It is funny that he watched me put the hearts around the room, yet he still needed me to help him find them again! He was so cute playing this game and we played it twice that morning.



**The printables I used were from last year. I think they are from Musings of Me, but she doesn't have them posted anymore. You can check her Teachers Pay Teachers site though!**

John joined us for the rest of the activities, starting with counting kisses. I put a numbered card out and John had to count out that many kisses for the bear on the worksheet. You can see they LOVE chocolate so the worksheet is completed with chocoloate-y drool spots. :) Matthew liked helping put out the kisses too. John could do this perfectly and I was so impressed that he is even getting the hang of subtracting!


not sure why this is rotated!!



John put these boys in size order...



and sorted letters.


(He also did WONDERFUL at completing patterns using colored heart erasers. He could do every pattern I threw at him. I was so excited! But, no pictures of that one.)

Matthew put hearts on a dot page.



I got the idea of a letter matching game from a blog that I follow (and of course I can't remember which one now!). I wrote lower case letters on little heart erasers and put them in plastic conversation hearts. Then I wrote upper case letters on large paper hearts and arranged them in a heart shape on the floor. The idea was that John would match the erasers to the correct heart on the floor. He did this fine for about 3 erasers and then got frustrated that Matthew was 'messing up the heart' on the floor. So, he decided to instead practice his jumping skills and jumped over the hearts. Matthew also joined in which is so dang cute since he can't really jump yet. Every once in a while he gets about 1/2 an inch above the ground and I think it surprises him. SO CUTE!







We had some yummy heart lunches...




did some arts and crafts projects...





and played 'post office' by mailing letters to different houses (or in our case, putting the mail under the door). John did great at writing house #1 on his envelope and adding the return address sticker and 'stamp'.








All in all, we had a great time. As usual we didn't get everything done that I had planned, but that is ok. I am looking forward to hanging out tomorrow with my favorite boys while we get ready for John's preschool party. We have lots of baking to do which is one of my favorite things to do with them.

Hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day!
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Valentine's Day Party {flashbacks}

So, Valentine's Day is NEXT WEEK! I usually throw the annual pizza party at my house but this year I decided I just couldn't make it work with trying to get the house ready to sell. As I took out my decorations tonight to let the boys decorate the 'school area', I was a little sad in not having the party this year. At least I can look forward to having the party next year in our new (bigger!) house!

I realized, however, I never posted about the parties from the last two years. So, I am going to go back in time, pull up old pictures, and share some Valentine's party love.

Let's start with the most important part of any party; the dessert. Actually, my favorite part of the party last year was the dessert set up. I used ribbon to hang over the mirror over my buffet to make the area look festive. Then I set up a bunch of yummy desserts.





These are my impostor whoopie pies. Well, I don't really know what whoopie pies are, so I only assume these are similar to whoopie pies. I used a muffin top tins to bake cupcakes. Then I sandwiched yummy icing in between two cupcakes. They are quite delicious. I mean, who doesn't like to eat two cupcakes at one time?!



I found the 'keep calm' sign somewhere around the internet (they are not hard to find!) and used some old wedding favor organza bags to fill with kisses as favors for the guests. You know, 'guests' sounds fancy but if we are being honest, it is just family over at the house. Do they really count as guests??



One thing I love about my house is that the dining room and formal living room is one big space. So when I have the whole family over, I can line up three tables and we can all sit together. Here is the table set up from last year. I used THESE place mats that I made about two years ago with my sweet hubby.



If you look carefully, you can see my thrifty (and scrawny) table toppers. When trying to fit so many people at the table, there is little room for decorations. I am also too cheap to make a huge display. I found almost everything for these decorations at the dollar store. I got the tin from the 'garden/flower' area (and covered with scrapbook paper I had already). Then I took some of the boy's playdoh and put the containers in the tins. I stuck the hear picks in the playdoh so they would stand upright at different angles. This will dry out the playdoh, but we had so many I could sacrifice a couple containers. Then I filled the tins with tissue paper and the poured some bags of conversation hearts to cover up the tissue paper. This all probably makes no sense, but I can't find the pictures that explains what I did! Sorry Charlie!



We always have an assortment of pizzas. Brad is our Pizza Master and does a fabulous job! Some are heart shaped, some are square, and some are round. We don't discriminate over here!





Way back in 2010, I made these cupcake toppers using mini candy canes left over from Christmas. I used THIS tutorial to make them. They were really easy to do and turned out really cute!



I actually had a crafty activity planned for this party. I made peanut butter rice crispie treats prior to the party. At the party, we used heart cookie cutters to cut out the treats, dip them in melted chocolate, then decorate with sprinkles. They were quite tasty, although most people left theirs at my house. I may, or may not, have eaten them by myself.



See, I told you we need the space to fit the whole gang!



This year we are getting together at my mom's house but I look forward to next year when I can hopefully host again!

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Simple Valentine's Mantel

In case you haven't notice, we are just shy of one month 'til Valentine's Day. I love Valentine's Day and all the sappy sweetness! I just think it gives me a good excuse to do extra fun and lovey things for my favorites boys and hubby.

Unfortunately, this year we are trying to get our house in tip top shape so we can try to sell it in March. So I am having to scale back this year on decorations and parties (no annual pizza party this year and I am already sad about it!). So, I decided to put up a simple mantel to bring a little color and festivity into the living room. So, here it is...



My garbage find shutter is still up (and I still love them!) and I strung heart doilies across the corner. I got the hearts from the dollar store last year and I am not sure if they have them this year. I made the wreath last year as well. I wrapped a foam wreath, also from the dollar store, with scrap fabric and tied a red ribbon at the top. I folded and hot glued cupcake liners onto the side of the wreath. Then I glued hearts (also from...the dollar store!) to add some heart pizzazz.





See, simple and pretty! Do you have a Valentine's mantel to share? If so, put the link in the comments because I would LOVE to see it!

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Valentine's Activities {part 2}

We finished up our Valentine's and heart activities this week. We took a day to go to the Children's Aquarium with daddy, so we didn't get to all my planned activities. But, that is ok!! I will just save them for next year!

My favorite activity was putting stamps on envelopes and mailing them in John's little mail box. I got the envlepes from Musings of Me. I wrote numbers on heart stickers and John had to match the heart 'stamp' to the correct envelope before mailing the envelope. It was a really cute activity and John did really well with counting how many hearts were on each envelope and picked the correct stamp. John also surprised me and was able to take the back off the stickers on his own too!







I made a file folder game using Musings of Me's size sort activity. I think that John is just getting really bored with sorting stuff because he will do one or two pieces and either say 'no' or 'mommy do'. I tried to make up so new creative activities for this upcoming week so hopefully he will be more engaged and interested!



We used a letter jumble from Moo Moo's & Tutus. I called out a letter and John had to cover it with a heart sticker. You can see he did 5 letters and got bored. :)



We used kisses to fill in the dots to make an H using Moo Moo's & Tutus printable. John LOVES chocolate so this activity was a big hit since he could eat the chocolate after. (well, some of the chocolate)!



John again used kisses to cover all the h's on this page from Moo Moo's & TuTus. He did it perfectly in about 5 seconds since he knew he could have the chocolate. So I guess having the correct incentive is key for John to complete an activity! :)



We ended the week by visiting the Dallas Children's Aquarium. John really enjoyed the trip, as did Matthew. It wasn't too crowded so we spent a good hour walking around looking at all the fish, turtles, sharks, sting rays, etc. I wish places like the Aquarium weren't an hour drive from our house so we could go more often!



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