Making our Valentine's Crafts!

Finally, all our Valentines have been delivered, so I can reveal what we've been doing all week!

Katie Anne and I have been so crafty this week, and I've been in absolute mom heaven. Before I had kids, I would stare at my Martha Stewart Livings and Family Fun magazines and just dream of all the different holiday crafts I'd do one day! We "did" a lot of crafts last year, but it was mostly her holding a dry paintbrush while I did the craft, and then we'd do a photo op at the end. This year, she is a total participant, and I don't know which of us had more fun! We did crafts every night last week, made post office runs to mail surprises almost every day, and literally spent all day Friday finishing up our projects.

We had a couple of different projects going. First, we made lollipops and decorated them. These were for grandparents, aunts and uncles, her teachers, and two surprise ones for Daddy, who didn't think he was getting any. Katie Anne loved "counting" out the chocolate chips ("One, two, five... one, two, five..."), tap-tap-tapping the molds, putting the sticks in, squeezing the icing bags (I quickly learned, the smaller the hole I cut, the better the lollipops looked) and - of course - shaking on lots and lots of sprinkles.

Then, we made heart shaped pins and paperweights from plaster of paris (incorporating recycling of the chocolate lollipop molds!). The pins were for KA's great-grandmothers, grandmothers, aunts, and teachers, too. Paperweights went to grandfathers and Daddy. I actually made this project with my first graders, too - it is really cheap and easy for kids to do! Then we painted them and glittered them to high heaven. Katie Anne didn't participate in the gloss coating (that was Mommy-only spray painting), but she did everything else.

Finally, we made dog treats dipped in dog-safe yogurt chocolate for our dog friends. We tried baking our own dog biscuits, but they never firmed up, so we resorted to our backup plan... Milkbones. This was by far Katie Anne's favorite thing to do... she loved swirling the dog bones in chocolate and sprinkling them.

Here's a slideshow of all the things we did...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

We had so much fun! I'm already thinking of our next projects!