Happy Hearts

Hello there lovelies! I hope everyone had a very happy and love-filled Valentine's day! We sure did! I have never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day or Heart Day, as I like to call it! I just feel like it is a day dedicated to people in love and if you don't have a special someone in your life, it is not the happiest of days, as you watch others receive flowers, gifts, etc. I still love getting into all the holidays for our kids' sakes...and this year was, in true Ashley style, over-the-top! The past two heart days, the kid(s) have been really sick leading up to it, so I never was able to get as into to it as I wanted too! Last year I was at Children's hospital with baby Reagan due to a horrible case of RSV the Saturday before heart day. :( The kids had been sick for two weeks at this point, with no answers. We came home from the hospital and I realized I didn't have Valentine's for Teddy's classmates. He had asked me to make cake pops for his friends and those are cute and delish so we did just that...sick baby and all (after what they did in the ER and a few days of the Nebulizer and some antibiotics, we were on the road to recovery. Thank God!) That being said, had he not have requested that I make the cake pops (he seems to love to share my baking with his friends), I would have just done a box of Valentine cards. That is what we grew up doing and think they are just adorable as well. My favorite were Suzy's Zoo Valentine's cards. We had to go to a special pharmacy to get them and I loved them!!!! 

I'm going to do a quick re-cap of what we did last year because I LOVE how they turned out!

I had Teddy go to town painting a bunch of different sheets of paper with red and pink and then we added all the other colors, green especially...why not?!

He was finally feeling better, but you can tell he had been so sick too, by looking at his eyes! He had RSV as well, but the inhaler helped him a ton! It's over a year later and I am still not over how sick they were and how helpless I felt! :( He looks so young! My babies are growing up too fast!

I used my Cricut machine and cut a bunch of hearts and then stamped them. I think they turned out so stinkin' cute. I am biased of course! Ha! 

Anywho, onto this year! Teddy requested that I "make cookies for his friends." How can I say no to that?! I have been purging like crazy the past couple weeks (6 huge black trash bags from the kitchen alone!)...more to come on that...but, I found these cute robot bags that I purchased from the Target "dollar section" last year and didn't use. I am trying to simplify our lives, our house, etc, so these needed to be used this year or tossed. I decided to use them. I had originally wanted to go in a different direction for Teddy's Valentines (before I found the bags) but decided to use what I had. I am thrilled that I did, because they turned out great and most importantly, Teddy LOVED them! 

I already had the 2 inch Avery labels and the red card stock and the punches. So, again, I just used what I had. That felt really great! I didn't have to buy a thing to make Teddy's valentines. I downloaded a few robot fonts from dafont.com and played around with them until I got the look that I wanted. My printer was being it's usual difficult self...so these tags were almost scrapped at the last minute! But, it all worked out and they ended up printing! I used my circle punch from none other than my precious, Paper Source. When I bought this, I knew this would come in handy, time and time again! I have had the mini hole punch forever. I think I bought it at Michael's a LONG time ago! I used a basic robot-themed statement, "You Make My Heart Go Beep Beep, " meant to be said in a robot voice of course! 

Here is the finished product. I put a heart shaped sugar cookie in each bag and tied it with baker's twine. I have an endless supply of red/white twine that I purchased at Crate and Barrel, two Decembers ago. It has come in handy in SOOOOO many occasions! Really one of the best purchases. You can see it on the cake pops from last year's project as well!

Here they are, all packaged up and ready to go to school! Really, they were such a simple concept since I already had everything but the cookies (I had m&ms to add to the bags, just in case I ran out of time for making the cookies, but luckily, I was able to fulfill Teddy's cookie wish! ha!)! Teddy loved the bags and was so excited to give them to his friends! As much as I enjoy doing this stuff, I am looking forward to Teddy getting more into doing his Valentines in the next few years! He may not ever be into it...but I think he will. It will be fun to see what ideas he has and what he wants to do for his friends! :)

Since moving here, I have made a few really great girlfriends. I wanted to give each of my sweet friends a little token of my love for them on this special day! I decided to give them mini daffodils. They are not very Valentine's Day related, but they are adorable and spring related!  I made homemade cards with my adorable lip stamp and my mini letter stamps. I LOVE how they turned out. I purchased the white hang tags from Office Depot! I now have a huge box of 500 of them! I was getting sick of buying a package of 10, each time from Paper Source. I love that place, but when you use certain things, like I do these, a bunch, you need to look for more economical options! My hubs would be so proud!  Haha!!!! 

Here are my sweet little flowers, ready to be delivered! I used burlap to wrap them and some buffalo check fabric for bows. Again, both things that I already had! :) Reagan and I drove around most of the morning of Valentine's Day, delivering these. It brought me such joy! I love to give gifts!

A couple random facts about moi, I have always been an little entrepreneur. I used to make these wooden heart pins for Valentine's Day and I sold them to my teachers, recess teachers, nurses that my mom worked with, etc.  I also used to make and sell stationary that I made with stamps! Both in elementary school! So, the embossing gun has been something I have loved for years! I purchased glitter embossing powder for this project and it was fabulous of course! Love my sparkles! :) I mainly use a clear ink pad and colored embossing powder. But I also sometimes do colored ink and clear embossing powder some too! Just depends on the project!

 Teddy's school had a lunch swap on Valentine's Day and since he doesn't usually go to school on Thursdays, they asked if we wanted to pay for the extra day and send him! Of course! He loves a celebration! I made lunch bags for he and his buddy for the swap. I also made tags for a few of our packages that we were going to give and I made tags for the Little Presidents and I decorated the 

hubs' card envelope! His was my fav thing that I did! I had too much fun with all of this stuff last week. Definitely kept me busy at night this past week! I loved it! 

I wanted to do a little something for Teddy's teacher. We are going on our second year with her and just love her so much. She has been so amazing. Tulips are so pretty and potted are just so great, so that's what I decided to do. Teddy loves to give me flowers as well, so I figured that he would love the idea of giving his teacher, flowers and he did! Random side note: he gave me my own potted tulips for

 heart day! :)

I didn't want to do big gifts for the kids because they are blessed beyond belief with toys, but I wanted each person to have a little something special to wake up to! :) The hubs ended up getting home late the night before/early morning of heart day. I was happy he was here. It was a nice surprise to have him change his schedule! :)

Reagan got a small bag of m&ms, which I hid almost immediately after she saw them and wanted to eat them right then and there. Ha! She also got a set of Chewbeads Bangles. I figured these would be perfect for her because she loves jewelry so much and these are pretty much indestructible! I bought myself this one to add to my daily arm party. I thought it was too cute and fun to pass up! It's so fun to wear. I might be adding a few more colors to our collection. I say our collection because Reagan helps herself to anything that is mine! :)

The last thing Teddy needs is more Legos, but this set was pretty small and neat. It can be three different things! Pretty cool! He and the hubs had fun putting it together! :) He got m&ms as well. I figured both kiddos had to get a tiny bit of chocolate on heart day! 

Here is the cookie package that we delivered to a couple of our friends! Again, the baker's twine!

There is something so sweet about a heart shaped sugar cookie. REally any sugar cookie! I LOVE them and have eaten my weight in these things! Ha!

The morning of heart day, I had to get Teddy and his friends' lunches made. Here are the finished products. 

I did heart shaped sandwiches, pirates booty, freeze dried raspberries, heart shaped fruit strips and chocolate milk. I also added disposable gingham napkins to use as a napkin and a placemat. Teddy's school requires the kids to eat on a placemat since they eat outside.The germaphobe in me loves this! I wanted them to have a red one to go with the theme of the day and luckily, again, I had these napkins from the Backyard Baby-Q that I threw in July!

I used a mini heart shaped cookie cutter to cut hearts out of Trader Joe's fruit strips! Both kids loved these!

I use reusable containers from Pottery Barn Kids for Teddy's lunch on a regular basis but I needed      different shapes for this lunch, so I bought some Ziploc reusable containers. They worked perfectly to put little Valentine's cupcake wrappers in.

I used two different shape heart cookie cutters for the sandwiches to minimize waste. The mini hearts were such a cute addition!

Last but certainly not least, here are two of my sweet Valentines and Abbey, the wiener photobomber!! They are too funny and grabbed these balloons(still from Teddy's party, floating all over my house!!!) to pose with for the picture. Not my idea at all, but I love how the pic turned out! Ha! 

I hope you had the best week and the best Valentines day yet and a very blessed weekend! Monday is on the horizon and I am ready!!! Much love to all of you! 

xoxo,

Ashley