Hello my lovelies! Well, Valentine’s Day is this weekend! Usually we do absolutely nothing to celebrate Valentine’s Day, but this year, with precious little going on, we are trying to use every available idea to bring a bit of happiness and celebration into our home. So this week we’ve been preparing for Valentine’s Day. And, as usual, we are all very excited!! We are in lockdown still here in Ontario, so this is very low-key, and completely manageable in a short amount of time. I hope you find a couple of ideas that you can incorporate into your Valentine’s Day!

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Invitations:

I have recently discovered that I love to send invitations to my children. I never used to bother, but they’re the only ones to send them to now, and it helps them get excited about the event! We are having our party after Quiet Time tomorrow, so I gave them their invitations first thing on Tuesday morning. I got them each a helium balloon from Dollar Tree, and made them invitations. You can see, download and print the invitations below.

😍Free Printable!!🙌

Below each image is a button that says, “Download.” Just click the button and you will be able to print it from there. I’d recommend printing it on both sides of one piece of paper, but if you don’t know how to do that (no judgement here!) then just glue or tape the pieces together. Then all you have to do is cut them along the horizontal line and fold them along the vertical line. Finish by filling in the blanks! My invitation said, “When: Friday at 2:30; Where: The Dining Room.” All my kids are at different stages of reading, so the front of each card was something that they could read themselves. My 4-year-old was so excited that she could read the front of hers, “XOXO.” That was pretty adorable!

Card Front:

Inside of Card

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Decorative Mailboxes for Valentines

This, and many other sweet ideas (like serving strawberry milk), came from Melissa at Modern Honey. You can check out her full post by clicking here. I used my Cricut to write on the envelopes (because I am not a hand-lettering kind of girl. I have deplorable hand writing!), glued on cut-out hearts from an old book (see No-Sew Hardcover Book Purse for that story), and then hung them from the ceiling with fishing line and tape. And now you’ll need some Valentine’s Day cards to put in them!

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Make Valentine’s Day Cards

I decided that everyone in the family would write a Valentine’s Day card to everyone else in the family, and put it in their mailbox/envelope. When we have our Valentine’s Day Party tomorrow we’ll open them up. We used Valentine’s Day Cards from several sources. One colour-in set we got from The Kitchen Table Classroom, click here to print your own, and some from my post from last year, click here for my free printable Valentines, and I also bought some at Dollarama. If you want to make your own from paper scraps then you should check out this post. Each child also made one for all of their cousins (except one baby! Sorry, Baby!!🙈) and we sent them in the mail (today…so they won’t even get them on time. Double🙈. My kids don’t know that they won’t arrive on time, though. #momwin) Bonus: It helped them practice their printing and colouring skills. No big deal.

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Adventures in Odyssey Valentine’s Day Episode

During our party tomorrow we are planning to listen to the Adventures in Odyssey’s episode, “The Last ‘I Do.'” It tells the story of St. Valentine and the origins of Valentine’s Day. You can listen for free on February 15th, (click the link here!) or you can buy it if you want to listen to it on Valentine’s Day (click this link to buy it!). I recommend Adventures in Odyssey on here all the time, so if you haven’t hopped on that bandwagon yet, you’re really missing out! If you have no idea what I’m talking about let me give you a brief description: award-winning audio dramas, made for kids (but I still love them…and cry during them🙄…often), teach morals, history, Bible, and much more. It’s FANTASTIC!!

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Fancy Breaky

Okay, I’m totally kidding. Well, I mean, if you want to make a fancy breaky, go right ahead. But I bought Strawberry Toaster Strudel (on sale) and drew little hearts on them with the icing. Nailed it.

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Decorate Valentine’s Day Sugar Cookies

I posted the recipe for my famous sugar cookies previously, which you can find by visiting this post. My kids LOVE making and decorating sugar cookies…and EATING them, of course! We’ll have a fancy tea party to go with our sugar cookies!

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Have a Tea Party

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A Simple Craft

What Valentine’s Day party would be complete without a craft? I saw this package of about 3 million hearts in a package at Dollarama. There are foam hearts, felt hearts, glittery hearts, sticky hearts, big hearts, small hearts…and more! So, we’re going to go glue them together and decorate them in all sorts of pre-packaged fun ways! I know, this isn’t the sort of glamorous craft you’ve come to expect from me (haha), but remember: if it’s not FUN and UNstressful, then what’s the point? Cut the corners, and enjoy your party (maybe I should needlepoint that onto a pillow).

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See a Friendly Face

We’re going to use Zoom to have my Mum visit for our party. She reads with the kids every afternoon (thank you, Mum!!), so instead of canceling with her we invited her! She’s planning her own little thing, so I’m excited to see what it is! I suggested telling the kids a story, or reading to them. She always tells them jokes, so maybe she’ll have some Valentines ones for them. I know Zoom never compares to the real thing, and that it’s always frustrating when the sound isnt working, or when there’s lag, blah blah blah. But desperate times… And it’s so much better than not seeing them at all.

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I really hope you can pull some of these ideas together for a little gathering of your own. I know I haven’t given you much time, but I’ve given you some tools, including the tools you need to cut the corners, and just have some special fun with your own little family. They’re the ones who matter anyway. When we plan big birthday parties, it’s for them too. It’s just as worth putting on a small shindig, as a big To-Do. Enjoy the time you HAVE to spend together, have some fun, and make some memories. Redeem the Covid days!!

❤Happy Valentines Day!❤