Glad I Made It: Homemade Valentine's Day Cards

Due 100% to Pinterest's complete and utter bad influence, I showed my kids ideas for homemade Valentine's Day cards, and let them pick what they wanted to make to give out to their classmates.

Let me fill you in on a little secret that no one tells you when you are enjoying Pinterest in your own crafty mom fantasy land: yours won't look even a little like whatever it is you're eyeing. (This is a lesson I should have remembered from my last Pinterest-inspired bout of creativity. But alas, I did not.)

Luckily for me, my kids are too young to notice (or they're just really, really polite). Here's what we made:

Kay "I sometimes go to first-grade" chose to make Play Doh Valentines. This involved a grown-up printing a circular label to go on top of the Play Doh container (we went with Tic Tac Doh! Be My Valentine!),

adding a heart sticker, and Kay signing her name.

Someone also needed to cut-out the label and affix it to the Play Doh container with a glue dot. This someone was supposed to be the child in my mind, but apparently it was me in her mind, so yes... it is mostly my handiwork.

Making these Play Doh Valentines was totally easy. But making them look good? Not so easy. Here is our Pin-spiration from Random Thoughts of a SUPERMOM!:

And here is our finished product:

With the Play Doh Valentines complete, next up was making Valentines that would be suitable for third-grader "I'm too cool for Valentines" Magpie. Her only criteria was not to include a message that could in any way imply she ever liked anyone at anytime, anywhere or in anyway. Her choice? You Rock! Valentines.

Again, the easy factor on making these classmate Valentine's Day cards is high. I cut out old-school hearts by folding pieces of construction paper in half, and Magpie used a glue dot to affix a rock or two to the heart. And, Magpie even wrote the Valentine's Day greetings all by herself.

I thought they looked pretty great:

But great as they are three-grade handwriting and all, they are nothing like the original Pin-spiration from Fiskars.com:

And last, my two-year-old Ziggy needed Valentines, but just a few. His preschool is Jewish, so there isn't any of that St. Valentine's Day stuff going on there, Baruch Hashem.

I made Ziggy's Valentines for him, using recycled crayon hearts we still had from when we made them last year for Earth Day. The heart crayon-size is just right for toddler hands, and I was happy these Crayon Heart Valentines only took a few minutes to make. Once again I just needed to cut-out a construction paper heart, glue-dot on the heart crayon, add a few stickers and write Happy Valentine's Day!

And while I couldn't be happier with how ours turned out, it sure doesn't compare to the original pin-spiration from WhipperBerry (or to a similar crayon Valentine that has been repinned over 16,000 times).

If you'd like more ideas for homemade Valentines, there are lots more here at Valentines That Make the Grade in the Classroom and on my Valentine's Day Ideas Pinterest Board.

Also? I will never degrade the value of a store-bought Valentine's Day card again.

Glad I Made It: Strawberry Hearts for Valentine's Day

Every since I made heart shaped fried potatoes last week, I've been heart-ing every food I can.

It's gonna be a rude shock to my Kawaii-loving kids when they have to back to go "regular" food once Valentine's Day is over.

While creating most heart-shaped food is based upon using a heart-shaped cookie cutter, you can make strawberry hearts free-form, since they're already pretty much a natural heart.

All you need to do is slice the strawberries in half, and then use a knife to carve a little v out of the top of the strawberry, and you're done.

Here's how our heart strawberries turned out, the kids enjoyed decorating their plates:

Heart fun for everyone!

Happy Valentine's Day!

How to Make Heart Fried Potatoes in 22 Minutes

With Valentine's Day a mere two weeks away, I've been making lots of heart-y crafts with my kids. So it seemed only natural that I would want to make hearty-y food, too.

Here are easy directions for making insane adorable Heart Shaped Fried Potatoes.

1. Go to Pinterest and look at all the insane adorable foods people have carved, kabobed and baked in the shape of hearts and decide you too must do that.

2. Choose to make something with potatoes since you do not have any of the ingredients needed for the other insane adorable ideas, and are too damn lazy to go to the store to get them.

3. Find this amazing recipe for Roasted Potato Hearts and decide to make them for family breakfast.

4. Realize the recipe has too many steps and is way too difficult for someone who only has one iCarly (i.e., 22 minutes) to make the insane adorable heart potatoes and the rest of breakfast.

5. Decide to improvise own almost-as-good heart potato recipe by slicing two potatoes semi-thinly, and then using a cookie cutter to cut out insane adorable hearts from the potatoes.

6. Realize cutting out insane adorable hearts from the potatoes is taking forever (which is way longer than one iCarly episode) and switch to a larger heart shaped cookie cutter.

7. Cut out one insane adorable larger heart potato.

8. Accept that even with this major improvement to the insane adorable heart-cutting out process, it is still going to take longer than you are willing to spend cutting out insane adorable heart potatoes. Especially when you are but one mother with seven remaining minutes, and who still has to make the rest of breakfast.

9. Heat oil in a heavy skillet, and fry the pan-full of insane adorable potato hearts you have managed to cut-out in the preceding fifteen minutes of your life that you are never going to get back.

10. Flip the potato hearts, and serve on platter alongside other regular non-heart breakfast foods.

11. Listen to the kids happily exclaim that there are hearts for breakfast! and decide it really wasn't so much work after all.

12. Vow to make even more and better insane adorable heart food next time!

You can see more insane adorable heart shaped food on my Pinterest Board Heart Food for Valentine's Day.

I've also put all the photos together here, because the other recipes on Pinterest look like this, and I so want to fit-in.

Glad I Made It: Q-Tip Snowflakes

My daughter Kay was home today with a hurt hand - an injury she received while crouching by the side of the ATM and invoking her favorite alternate persona, Baby Fish. Unfortunately for Kay Baby Fish, while crouched she nudged a big piece of marble that fell on her hand, er or would that actually be her fin?

Ironically enough, this all happened on the way to a well-patient visit to the pediatrician. But instead we came into the waiting room like it was an ER with Kay (Baby Fish had swam away by now) sobbing hysterically and her hand already swelled up to the size and color of a boxing glove.

Anyway, the hand still isn't quite right (although thankfully an x-ray revealed no break) so she stayed home today with me. 

As you may recall, last time she was home from school we made toothpick art:

Not to be outdone, today I brought out the Q-tips.

She made a bunch of cool designs:

and this awesome snowflake:

And while I will admit I sorta think she should've gone to school, as long as Kay Baby Fish was home, I'm glad we got to spend some time together and make these q-tip crafts.

For more fun snowflake crafts you can make with clever items like price tag stickers check out Simple & Striking Snowflake Crafts for Kids. And yes, you can learn how to make a handprint snowflake here.

Disclosure: Glad I Made It is a total rip-off of Glad I Saw It