A Week of Easy Valentine Ideas

In past years me and my daughter have used several different kinds of items to create valentines. Most were for school ideas but some were ideas we gave to each other. All were easy to create and pretty minimal money involved. I hope you enjoy these ideas as much as we enjoyed creating them.

Idea 1: Go on a scavenger hunt for Rocks or go buy them at the dollar store. Paint them or leave them natural and write "You Rock" on the top and the child's name on the bottom with a sharpie. We painted pink ones for girls and blue ones for the boys. The kids loved them.

Idea 2: A $1.00 box of chocolates with a Forest Gump Quote. I love that movie.

Idea 3: Find a Globe, a map, etc and make a little tag that says "You mean the world to me"

Idea 4: Find a stuffed animal or a coloring book page of jungle animals and put a tag that says "I'm wild about you!"

Idea 5: Buy a Reece Cup and make a tag that says "We make a great pair!"

Idea 7: Use some left over striped wrapping paper to create pockets for microwave popcorn. Embellish however you want and make a little tag that says "Poppin by to say Happy Valentine's Day"

PTO Christmas Party - Breakfast with Santa

Here are some more details from the Candyland Christmas Party we had for the students.

Candy Cane Lane: We collected 2 liter bottles, wrapping paper rolls, and quilt batting for the Christmas party for the school's Breakfast with Santa. We cut the bottom of the 2 liter bottles off to use for anchors for the wrapping paper rolls to create Candy Cane Lane. The 2 liter bottles were filled with sand and paper and then we stuck in the "wrapped" recycled paper rolls to create the peppermint sticks.

Chocolate Woods: In the middle of the candyland board we created a chocolate woods scene. This consisted of Candy boxes that we obtained from Sam's Club, large hershey kisses, M&M's, tulle, tissue paper, and some wooden trees. The large hershey kisses were made from the top of the 2 liter bottles that we cut off to make the base of the candy cane lane anchors. The tops of the 2 liters were wrapped in aluminum foil to make them look like hershey kisses. The M&M's were made from foam cut in circles with painted on M's. Someone thought it was a chocolate train when they looked at it. That would have been really cute. I wish I would have thought of it.

Fireplace: The fireplace was made out of boxes, brown lunch bags, mailing tubes, wrapping paper, and tissue paper. The brick pattern was made from brown lunch bags overlapping. The main fireplace was made from a flat screen TV box. An opening was cut out and filled with black paper to make it look like the inside of a fireplace. Mailing tubes were covered in wrapping paper that looked like wood and bundled together with tulle and tissue paper to look like a fire. The mantle was made by wrapping the foam from the TV box with paper and placing it on top. Then finally the stocking were hung to give it a little something extra.

Milk and Cookie Mountain: We initially collected Milk Jugs to create an igloo of some kind. When we didn't have enough we came up with this idea. We would create giant cookies and make a mountain out of the milk jugs. The cookies were created using deli cookie tray lid and tray and cardboard cake rounds.

I plan to post more details about the party soon. I hope you are enjoying the pics as much as we enjoyed creating this candyland(mostly out of recycled items).