I Can't Believe I Took This Many Pictures of Paper

Longtime readers may recall my old Valentine's tune regarding handmade valentines.  It goes something like this: "Deedle-dum, lalala, I don't think we'll do this again next year."

Why don't I ever remember this tune before we begin?


The girls and I made a couple of dozen of these valentines (and by "girls and I," I mean that I cut out everything for them to assemble and then sign their names on, which is kind of dumb, huh?).  I stole the fortune cookie idea from Martha Stewart, but ours didn't look like hers do. I can't imagine why.  The archery idea came from here.  (Again, how come ours don't look like the others?)



 


Boooooring, right?

Don't worry.  Things get better.  See, the girls still had over 30 valentines to make, and I was done for the year, so I gave them a glue gun, googly eyes, paper, and paints, and set them loose.  Setting them loose looks a lot like this at the beginning, but it gets even more like a bomb went off exciting by the end.





I showed them some ideas from the internet, and the older girls snipped, glued, and assembled without my having to lift more than a few fingers. The younger girls needed a Mama, though, so I helped Pip with these.







She was extremely pleased with them.








Luci helped glue on hearts, colored the card, and then flashed a fetching grin.








For the painting portion, the table was split into two camps. The first was an orderly regiment of veterans.







The other camp?  Not so much.

They painted some pretties, anyway-- spilled water, dumped paint, and all.

 

I was going to make handprint spiders with Lu, too, until we discovered that she has a horsey handprint, instead.






These next ones are from the veterans, though you can probably deduce that on your own.








The older girls made just about every one of these animals from here.  (Great tutorials, by the way.  I give them two lazy thumbs up.)


 









Susie made the caption, "Coon you be mine?"  That girl's going places someday!







And now, after two giant sessions of making valentines, I just caught myself humming that tune again.  "Deedle, dum, lalala...."