A Valentine’s Day Round Up

photo from riptheskull's flickr

Valentine’s Day is like THREE days away. Seriously? Holy cow. I totally wanted to make little gifts for all the kids in our neighborhood. Plus a fun gift from Lydia to her Daddy. *sigh*

As Lydia gets older, I’ve been wondering what to do about these little mini-holidays like Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s Day. One of the girls on my messageboard gave me some great advice–she has them focus on handmade gifts. The idea is not to receive something or wonder about the big gift you’re going to get…but to make something handmade for siblings and friends. This might mean not buying anything from Target’s Valentine aisle for your kids. *GASP* I seriously love this idea. I want Lydia and Asa’s first response to a holiday or special event is to want to GIVE.

Hopefully, I’ll get in the groove and crank out something super cute for Lydia and I to make together. Here’s a few great ideas I’ve found today…

Fancy Folded Envelope at Blissful Kids

Chocolate Dipped Pretzel Hearts at Make & Takes

Cute Cupcake Valentines at Danielle’s Place

The Best Free Printable Valentines from Alpha Mom (could I love this site any more?!)

Kids Activities for Valentine’s Day from Helium (beyond crafts and candy!)

I browsed Amazon and cbd.com for some Valentine’s Day books. I am really interested in a book about the actual history of Saint Valentine. But everything looked kinda boring. Do you know of any fun or interesting Valentine books?

Leave your favorite Valentine’s Day tips, books and activities in the comments!

A Plethora of P’s

There is so much good stuff to go with P! You could do this for weeks. My favorite color is purple and Lydia’s is pink, so that would work. But then pasta is always good, too. And pandas, my fave! Penguins would be fun. Pictures are always great for my little photographer. Puppies are a plus. There’s just too much to choose from! Hmmm…

Let’s get to our verse first. We chose Psalm 135:3, “Praise the Lord, because He is good.” (This is actually just the first part, but if you have an older child, you should do the whole verse because it says, “Sing PRAISE to his name, because that is PLEASANT!”)

It’s an easy verse but I think it is a small sermon. This is the kind of confidence I always want to have in God. That no matter the circumstance here on earth, we can trust that God is good. So good in fact, that our response is to praise Him. It’s a verse that could sound trite, but I pray it really cements itself in Lydia’s heart.

Now, onto our craft. We ended up copying No Time For Flash Cards’ “P” craft a little and did some pasta P’s. I even used some pink & purple paper (although, I have to admit, it’s the only color I had!).

My daughter enjoyed this one so much we ended up making another pasta P.

Then we discovered 2 of our fingers started with “P”—pointer and pinky. So, we put pasta on our pointer and pinky and proceeded to sing, “Where is Thumbkin?” She’s eating lunch right now and has been singing it nonstop!

Speaking of lunch, look what we ate:

That’s right Pasta and Peas!

And a few more things I found to go along with P:

• How cute is this blog? It’s called Kiddio and is full of crafts, book reviews, etc. This one would be perfect for P—a book and an activity about PEAS!
• And oh, I want to do this! A Puppy Party with a cute cake, cute decor and the best is the doggy bag. I love it!
• I glanced through our books before naptime and found, Please Do Not Open This Book! which I think is just the 35th Anniversary book of The Monster at the End of this Book. It was one of my favorites as a kid and now Lydia loves to read it. It must say PLEASE and PAGES a hundred times. We read it today and said, “p-p-please” and “p-p-page” every time. She thought it was hysterical.