2024 School Valentines

Our school celebrates Valentine's Day and the kids really enjoy it - even my fifth and sixth graders like making and passing out cards. MIPS is so small that many of the students bring in cards for every student (and teacher) in kindergarten through sixth grade. This year I opted to 3D print flexible dinosaurs to give to my students, and the kids LOVED them! Of course I made a card to share, too. Cheesy, I know, but what is Valentine's Day without a few goofy cards?

My Funny Valentine

Out of the mouths of babes...

But, truth be told, there are occasional days where "tolerating the B.S." is what parenting teenagers is all about. Luckily those days are few and far between.

Happy Valentine's Day

There it goes...

My Valentine's Day present...

My husband packed up the kids and headed for the 9:00 am boat and then onto a weekend of fun. Leaving me home alone. All alone until I have to leave for work on Monday morning. I'm looking at two glorious days at home, all by myself. I can't even remember the last time I was home alone. I may do laundry, but I may also binge watch The Crown, or Star Trek. Only time will tell.

Happy Valentine's Day

I came into school today and found this lovely little surprise waiting for me in the Teacher's Lounge. I hope your day is off to as nice of a start as mine.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2017 Valentines

As always, my kiddos wanted personalized Valentine cards to pass out to their friends at school. This year Miss K wanted cards with this Sans character on them. (Apparently Sans is a little skeleton guy in a game called Undertale - which, of course, I've never heard of. Nor has she ever played.) We packaged him with SweeTart skulls and bones. Most of her friends didn't get the tibia joke, but that's OK.

S has been addicted to Swedish Fish lately and wanted something with a fishy theme. Nothing too fancy, but they sure looked cute in bags with the red fishies. I hadn't had Swedish fish in years - I'd forgotten just how good they were...

Feel free to download these and use them. The high resolution versions are below; just right click and save to your computer. Only part  the image shows, but it will all be there when you save it.

It's All About the Pokemon, Baby

I'm not quite sure why, but this year both of my children requested that I make them Pokemon Valentine cards to pass out at school. I've heard quite a bit about Pokemon lately, and it's really not my thing. My son is quickly learning about attacks and defenses and the names of countless little monsters; and I just have to smile because it's all Greek to me. I wonder if there's an Idiot's Guide to Pokemon? Hmmmm.

I'll be right back, I need to Google that... 

Yup. A lovely person created one here.

My two are into the video game rather than the card game, but at least it's a place for me to begin. Anyway...

I love that they both had very specific ideas about the graphic design of their cards. S was very clear about having a bubbly blue background, and K knew precisely what she wanted her card to say. Thank goodness I was able to make them both happy. 

If you happen to have a little Pokemon fan at home, feel free to download the full-sized images below. They are big enough to print out as a standard 4 x 6 inch print. They are large images, so don't worry that the entire image doesn't show up here, it will all be there when you download it.

Pokemon, Frillish and Purrloin are owned by the Pokemon Company, International. 

Homemade Character Valentines

It's February, so I guess it's time to start thinking about Valentine's Day. Personally, I love homemade valentines. For the past couple of years, I've done things with the kids' faces on them, but this year the kids wanted cards with characters. I thought about just buying them at the store, but I knew there just had to be a better way. There had to be a way to create personalized cards that still had the kids'  favorite characters.

My first thought was to make them in Photoshop. So, I put this cute photo of Lego R2 D2 on a white background, added some cheesy text, and my son thought it would be perfect for the girls in his class.

Too girly? Really? How can Star Wars be too girly?  But, you know, it's important to portray the right image in second grade, so it was back to the drawing board. As I searched for images I could use, I came across this site. It was perfect! Large images - often with lots of space for text. I got to work and came up with card number two:

Of course, as a teacher, I needed valentines too! The Muppet fan in me fell in love with this picture of Oscar: 

My daughter is all about My Little Pony these days. So after viewing all the MLP backgrounds she settled  on the one below.  

Just in case you happen to have a little girl at home who loves My Little Pony, here is the same card without my daughter's name. You can download the font for free here. (You can find the fonts I used in the R2D2 card here and the Darth Vader card here - both also free.) Then just use your favorite graphics editing software and add in your child's name. (Or skip that step and have her sign with a silver sharpie.)  I cropped the image to be 4 by 6 - just perfect to upload to Snapfish  to get printed for nine cents each. I suppose you could do it at home, but I always seem to run out of ink at the most inopportune moments, so for me, Snapfish was easier.

Please feel free to download these cards and use them. Just be aware that you can't sell them - the characters are all trademarked, or is it copyrighted? I'm not sure, but either way selling them is a big no no.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Silhouette Valentines

I love Valentine's Day. I know Valentines are just silly little pieces of paper, but I've just always just loved them. I think it's because I have such fond memories of Valentine's Day from my childhood. I wasn't exactly popular in elementary school, but on Valentine's Day everyone was nice I got cards from all the other kids. Sure, they didn't have a choice, but as a kid I don't remember being really aware of that fact.  (I may have also been in denial...) When I was little we always bought our cards, but these days I've been trying to make homemade ones. (Check out our Valentines past here and here.)

 I instantly fell in love with the idea of a silhouette card when I found them at this lovely little shop, but $15.00 for cards for each of us just wasn't in the family budget (as a teacher I need Valentines, too.) I've been feeling a bit braver with photoshop lately, so I thought I'd try to make them myself.

I started by taking a profile picture of each child in front of a plain background. (Think plain white wall with good light and few shadows.) Then, using photoshop, I edited out that background, changed the colors around, and added the text. The thought bubbles, heart and circles were right there in photoshop so all I had to worry about was the placement. I really loved the boarder in the cards on Etsy, and thought the scalloped boarder I found here would do the trick. (You should pop in over there - she's got lots of great free downloads, and even more stuff for paying members.) The boarder is a separate layer in photoshop, so it was a good way for me to tackle learning how to use them. (So easy!) I uploaded the finished images to my favorite photo printing site and, at only ten cents per print,  was able to get a class set for less than $3.00 per child. I'm really happy with how they turned out - cute, personal and best of all - homemade.

Are you planning anything interesting for Valentine's Day?

Homemade Valentine's Day Cards

I saw these Valentines last year and immediately fell in love with the idea. They were cute, personal, simple, and best of all - homemade. I showed them to the kids, and while they didn't really care about the homemade part, they loved the idea of giving their friends candy.

The hardest part was getting a good photo - one with a hand in a decent position and large enough not to tear once the stick was inserted. Then I photoshopped in the messages, uploaded them to Kodak, and they arrived in the mail a week later.

I cut the slits above and below the hands with an exacto-knife and the kids are ready to slide the suckers into their hands tonight after dinner. I know these did end up costing more than other Valentine options, but the kids really like them and, of course, so do I. Plus, we don't have to spend forever signing their names on each one. At four and six, writing your name that many times is quite a daunting task. I liked them so much, I needed some for myself.

Despite the fact that they wouldn't be homemade, I am leaning toward these for next year. The science teacher in me adores them! Yeah, I know, I'm a geek...

Paint Sample Valentine's Day Bookmark

These are the Valentine's I am giving to my students this year. I love them - especially the fact that they won't go right into the trash as soon as the kids get home, And that I inadvertently chose the paint sample with the color "hot to trot" smack dab in the middle. Perfect for Valentine's Day, don't you think? If you'd like to make a few, here's what you'll need:

paint samples - one per Valentine (I got mine at Lowe's)
hole punch
heart punch (optional)
corner rounder (optional)
permanent marker
narrow ribbon (mine was 3/8 inch wide)

1. Round the corners of the paint sample using the corner rounder. The samples I got were already the perfect size, so I didn't have to cut them down. If you want smaller bookmarks, you could cut the samples down or even use a different size or style paint sample.

2. Punch a hole in the center of the top of the bookmark, about 1/4 inch down from the edge. I just used a standard size hole punch.

3. Write your message in permanent marker. I went with the book theme, but you could write whatever message you wanted to. I also signed mine after I took the photo. I discovered that water based markers smeared and didn't look nearly as nice as the Sharpie did, so use a permanent marker. If you have a ton of them to make you could print your message on clear address labels and stick them on, or use a white label and stick your message on to the back.

4. Punch a heart into the center of the bottom of the bookmark. If you'd rather, a sticker would look cute here, too. I used the punch I already had to keep my costs down. (All I had to buy was two spools of ribbon for $0.50 each at Jo-Ann's. One spool made about 25 bookmarks.)

5. Cut the ribbon into about 15 inch lengths, or whatever you like for the size of your bookmark. Find the center of the length of ribbon and fold it in half. Thread the looped end through the hole you punched in the top and then bring the two ends up through the loop and tighten. Viola! You've got a lovely Valentine's Day card / bookmark that (hopefully) isn't headed right for the landfill.

Valentine's Day Table Runner

Children sure do change one's outlook on things, don't they. Before I had kids I decorated for Christmas but that was it. Now it seems I am decorating for other holidays as well.

Here is the quilted table runner I made for Valentine's Day. It was quick and easy - probably only took me three hours or so. My son loved it! I have fabric to make one for St. Patrick's Day and Easter, too. Size: 14.5 inches X 72 inches