Homemade Valentines

I had a busy week getting my three oldest kids ready for their Valentine’s parties at school… instead of skipping a blog, I thought I’d share what we did!

Confession: I’m not very crafty.

I also love Pinterest. I go through seasons of pinning like crazy, followed by seasons of wishing that I could actually do some of things that I pinned. When I muster up the courage to attempt a Pinterest find, it usually ends up a Pinterest fail. In an effort to avoid spending crazy amounts on store-bought valentines, however, I decided to pursue creativity and search for some valentines to make at home. And I think I stumbled upon some Pinterest success! 🙂

(Note: we don’t have a color printer, so I just printed everything in black & white then mounted it on cardstock or construction paper to give it some color!)

My son Jackson LOVES Despicable Me (1 & 2), so when I came across this valentine, I knew it would be perfect for him! Here is the original link for the “You’re One in a Minion” valentine: http://www.craftymorning.com/despicable-me-youre-one-in-minion/

And here was our finished product! ❤

My daughter Laci loves to write, and we found quite a few ideas with pencils. We narrowed it down to two… We made this one for the girls in her class (and one for Grandma Tami):

(I found the idea here: http://www.happyclippings.com/2013/02/diy-just-write-valentines-day-printable-card.html)

And this one for the boys!

(Original link: http://dixiedelights.blogspot.com/2012/02/youre-just-write-free-printable.html)

Laci also had to decorate a box to collect all her valentines at her school party. After much deliberation, we decided on a castle! (Although a minion box was a close second…)

Here was our main inspiration: http://www.mommylessons101.com/2012/01/creative-valentine-box-6-castle.html

We had to get creative with the supplies we had. After setting aside all possible recyclables for about a week, we ended up using two smaller oatmeal canisters for the towers and a mini frozen pancake box for the main section. I covered the three pieces in pink wrapping paper while Laci was at school, then we spent the evening decorating! It was a lot of fun 🙂

We love how it turned out:

And it didn’t cost anything to make!!

For Elijah’s valentine, I found some Star Wars ones that used glow sticks for light sabers. We loved this one, http://www.designwashrinserepeat.com/2013/02/freebie-yoda-best-valentine.html, but it didn’t look so well printed in black and white. So I kept on searching and found this one: http://bargainbriana.com/diy-may-the-force-be-with-you-glow-stick-star-wars-lego-valentine/

I added “To” and “From” on the bottom. Note: be careful when assembling so you don’t want “break” the glow sticks. Thankfully we had two extra! 🙂

Each set of valentines took quite a bit of printing and pasting, as well as assembling, but it was all worth it in the end! We spent about $14 on supplies: $6 on Twinkies, $1 for googly eyes, $2 on pencils, and $5 for glow sticks. Also, a paper cutter and single-hole puncher were necessities!

Here are some of the ‘after’ photos:

Jackson with all his treats…