Happy Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day has always been one of my favorites, and not because of roses, chocolates, or romance. It is all to do with my children passing out clever Valentines. (Okay, so maybe chocolate is always involved, but never in heart shaped boxes.)
This year was my last year of one of my kids being in elementary and handing out Valentines. I have hit the end of an era! Since 2009, when Garrett was born and Emilee was in Kindergarten, we have done a Valentine for their class. There were a couple years missed where we moved, or I was soaking up sun in Hawaii, but each year we have had a personal Valentine with something the kids have enjoyed that year.
Emilee stages went from American Dolls, to being a Rockstar, to handing out Hoppy Taws. Mac has been just about every Super Hero imaginable, and I found a lot of times we used their Halloween costumes, which was a double win for Valentines day! Garrett has followed in his brother's footsteps, so we did have a repeat of Transformers for different years.
Create Your Own Personalized Valentine
Over the past 10 years of Valentine creations I have learned a few things...
1. This is a great time to have fun! I let my kids pick the theme of their Valentine, and it has always made the difference. It has also made making Valentine's boxes a different adventure, but fun to be themed all the through.
2. Free Fonts have become by best friend! On Christmas cards or Client work, I want the font to add to the picture, not take away, but when my kid wants a Lego Valentine, nothing else is going to look as good as the Lego Font, so that has been a fun resource to use. Along with fonts I have loved using images or buying stock images to help with Valentine. The year we did the Hopscotch for Emilee took quite a bit of work to find the school yard hopscotch in the right dimensions.
3. As much fun as the card is to create, we always like to give it with good candy. We love fun size chocolates at our house, and I find putting the card in a baggy with 3 chocolates makes the perfect Valentine giveaway!
4. This is probably my favorite part, and that is coming up with a clever saying. The one thing to keep in mind is to come up with something generic, so most of ours have been about having a great day, or what an awesome friend they are. I think my all time favorite saying was the iMac one, but when your kid pulls off his super cool name, it does deserve to be on a Valentine!
As I mentioned earlier, this was the last year for the clever box, the awesome card, and the yummy treat. So we did go all out this year...
Garrett was really inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory written by Roald Dahl and read by his teacher earlier this year. He was so inspired that we watched the different versions of the movie, and he was Willy Wonka for Halloween. For his Valentine we created a Golden Ticket, and attached it to Giant size Hershey Bar. For my Eleventh Year of Valentines, I think this one really showed how we can all be inspired from so many ideas. I can't wait to see what you all create next year. Better yet, I really don't want this to be my last year of Valentines, so lets get together and create something for your child, so we can Celebrate all of the wonderful things about them!
“I've heard tell that what you imagine sometimes comes true."
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