You are the CREME of the crop!

Ethen handed these out in his class for V-day.  I figured that since this would be his last year *tear*, that we would go all out.  I was going to do those little cans of soda, but holy crap, they're pricey in comparison to the regular sized cans!  I ended up buying two twelve packs for around $5 -not too much more than I would have spent had I bought the paper valentine's from the big-box store and some candy to go with it. 

We used Shasta Raspberry Creme Soda and Shasta Creme Soda.  I printed the tags on card stock using the computer.  They say, "You are the CREME of the crop! Happy Valentine's Day!  From: Ethen".  He wouldn't let me say "love".  Silly boys that think they're too cool. 

Ethen & I cut the circles out, I attached them with glue stick to bigger circles of some red scrapbook paper that I had on-hand, and then Ethen punched holes to stick the twine through.  We strung the twine through the pop tab on the top of the soda can, stuck the twine through the hole on the tag, tied a double knot, and then a bow, and called it good!

Only downfall to this Valentine?  His sisters had to help him carry all of the soda cans to his classroom that morning. 

Valentine Cards -Day 3

According to Asher, his Valentine's were a huge hit.  He said that all of his friends were thanking him for the bouncy balls (I'm sure his teacher appreciated the balls much more than Kelly & Cailin's teachers appreciated the chewing gum!). 

Of course, I got the initial idea from pinterest.  I love, love, love pinterest, and could waste half of my day on there if given the chance.  It's a good thing I have so many kids (and college deadlines) to keep me in line!  Here is the link that pinterest lead me to for the creating of this card:  http://zakkalife.blogspot.com/2012/01/out-of-this-world-valentine.html

Materials Required:
bouncy balls
black cardstock
silver marker
scissors and/or X-acto knife

The first thing that I did was cut out (way too many) hearts, using the black cardstock. 
Then I wrote the words "You're out of this world!" with the marker (I actually have about 6 different colors of metallic markers, so we had a variety of colors going on).  I let Asher draw all the dots (stars) and small planets (circles -or in Asher's case, oblong shapes), and his name. 
While Asher was drawing stars & planets, I used an X-acto knife to cut a circle out of the middle of one of the black hearts.  My goal was to make the circle just big enough to shove a ball in there, and have it remain there without falling out.  I'm proud to say that I only made one too big!  Once I had the circle size that I wanted, I used that as a template for all of the others.  I placed the original on top of the others, traced the circle with a pencil, and then used the X-acto knife to cut out the circles on each one. 
Once the holes were cut, we were ready to put the balls in, and they were done! 

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! For real this time!

Do you remember how cool Valentine's were when we were little kids?  The cards that you can buy at wal-mart today don't even compare.  I've seen a couple of unique ones, but most of them are so dumb! 

The kidlets all had a fantastic day, complete with bags of candy.  They're currently running around outside, wearing off their sugar high. When they got home from school today, and asked what snack was, I pretty much gave them permission to eat as much of their candy as they wanted.  It seemed like the best option in my eyes.   Let them eat it all at once, and for tomorrows snack we can have carrot sticks and apple slices! 

As promised, more Valentines:

Please forgive my crappy pictures of pictures.  These are the cards that Cailin & Kelly handed out to their mates today.  I took their pictures, uploaded them to my computer and then did a bit of editing and added some text on picnik (r.i.p. -so sad to see picnik is closing).  I had them printed at Walgreen's (even found a coupon code for buy 25, get 25 free. woo-hoo!), and then we stuck the cheap packs of gum (20 in a pack for $4 and some change at Wal-mart) on with a glue dot.