Making Valentine's Day Cards

This year Ella's teacher sent home a note requesting that all students make their Valentine's Day cards or at least add something special to store-bought ones. Being a person that enjoys crafts, I was not too bothered by the request. I actually really like making cards with my girls. It's an activity that we can do together and create something special for our friends. In fact, we've made our own cards the past couple of years.

When Ella was in preschool, we made these little beauties based off an idea from Family Fun.


Last year, we decided to use up some of the many, many old crayons we had by making these little crayon hearts.

This year, we again turned to Family Fun for inspiration. They have a fantastic gallery of homemade Valentine's cards. I let Ella peruse the gallery and she chose these Lollypop Flowers. We spent Saturday morning putting them together.

The added bonus of homemade cards is that it usually can be very cost-effective. The one year Ella gave out store-bought cards, we ended up buying one package of "boy" cards and one of "girl" cards. By making our own, our only expense is the candy we use for them since I almost always have some sort of scrapbook paper, cardstock or construction paper on hand.  This year our total cost was just $3 for the lollypops which covered Valentine's for both of the girls' classes. Can't beat that.