Happy Valentine's Day!!

Our mantle this morning

Happy Valentine's Day!! I hope you are finding a way to give and receive love today!! I have to say I am feeling well loved with the most entries EVER on Sharing Saturday. We have decided to end our Sharing Saturdays on Wednesday since people were not really looking at the entries added after that. So please feel free to link up today and tomorrow and go check out the amazing entries we have gotten!!

Today I want to share with you about our Kids' Valentine Swap.

We have six children participating including Hazel ranging in age from two to ten-years-old. One from England, one from Australia, and the rest from the United States. I know several parents have let me know that they have gotten them off late or have not mailed them, but we figured it wouldn't matter to the kids since getting mail is always exciting. All we asked was for each child to make a valentine and send it to each of the other's with a postcard from where you live. That way if parents want to do a geography lesson they have something more personal to use.

I gave Hazel several choices of cute valentines to make and this is the one she chose. She chose the one without candy (I was surprised) but made finger puppets.

Demonstrating how to use them

I cut out the hearts (using my scrapbook materials) and punched out the holes. Then we glued on eyes and added glitter glue mouths and stickers for cheeks, nose and ears.

On the back we stamped Happy Valentine's Day and signed her name. Then we attached a pipe cleaner for arms with a sticker.

We have only received one valentine thus far. It is the one from England. Hazel was so excited to get it.

Thank you, Annabel!!

We will share more pictures as they come in.

I also finally finished Hazel's owl last night and made her a quick valentine with it.

We have been doing some heart related crafts. Over the weekend, we made the marbleized hearts from Cheap Crafty Mommy that I featured on Saturday. Hazel's favorite part of the craft was mixing the paint into the shaving cream. After that she got bored (as she did with every craft we tried). I tried using card stock and foam hearts that we had. I discovered it didn't work well to scrap the paint and shaving cream off the foam, so I wouldn't recommend it.

Foam Heart

Oh, and we used pink, red and red glitter paint for colors.

I was happy with how they came out. Then I had to decide what to do with them. I made a mobile. For the two large ones I glued two of the hearts together and wrote God on them. Then on the small ones on the undecorated side I wrote words like: love, family, peace, hope, joy, faith. Then I strung them and hung it up.

We also tried the yarn hearts that I featured from Tot Treasures. Hazel's favorite part of this was cutting the yarn. She did not like getting her hands dirty with the homemade glue, so she quit pretty quickly on me with this one.

We also tried the bird seed ornaments that Verde Mama shared at a Sharing Saturday in January. We didn't have peanut butter since Hazel doesn't like it, but we used almond butter. It was a bit messy and liquidy at least more than I thought it should be, but that may be the almond butter. I'm not sure. Again Hazel didn't like get the mess on her hands and quit (but when I finished then asked to do another craft). We hung one outside already, but it doesn't look like it has been eaten at all yet, but our bird feeder is still more than half full (in the summer it empties in less than one day) and has been for weeks now.

I hope you have a wonderful Valentine's Day!!