Happy Valentine's Day

 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I know its a "Greeting Card Holiday" and very commercialized, but I can't help myself from getting into it. It probably goes back to my flowershop days (did Shannon and I ever mention we both worked at a local flowershop when we were in high school? Kelsey worked there too!). While sometimes it seemed like torture to be cleaning the thorns of literally thousands of roses, it always smelled sweet and the arrangements were so beautiful.

Anyway, another reason why I am into it? JJ is a stud. He has a couple girlfriends he likes to send Valentines to. He likes to send some to his cousins too. Last year he sent some little stuffed animals and generic "first valentine's day" cards but I wanted to do something a little more personalized this year. I saw adorable hand print valentines like this one:


Source: time2saveworkshops.com

but the thought of covering JJ's hands in paint made me twitch. I could just see red and pink paint all over his highchair, his hair, his face, and my kitchen. I did see a couple pins for edible finger paints (like this), but I didn't think it would make a good hand print. Then Shannon sent me this pin:


Source: We Heart It

A thumbprint seemed a lot more reasonable. So I gathered my supplies which included a red stamp pad and pack of blank Valentine's Day cards from the dollar spot at Target and got to work.

I tried occupying JJ with a crayon and some paper thinking I would be able to distract him from what I was doing with his other hand, but he didn't quite get that you have to move the crayon back and forth and not just bang it up and down. We are working on it.

 

Regardless, I managed to get him to surrender his thumb long enough to make a bunch of "hearts" on the bottom of each card. I use the term hearts loosely because they turned out nothing like the pin.

 

To help the recipients know its supposed to be a heart, I just drew a heart around each one and filled out the rest of the card.

I slipped each card in an envelope along with an Elmo Valentine's day book and sent them out to his friends Ella and Vanessa, his cousin Emma, and his Godmother Katie (hoping she will read the book to his cousin Sal). We hope everyone enjoys them!

Not only does JJ have a couple friends/cousins his around his age, he also has a bunch of older ladies in his life. Aunts, Great Aunts, Grandmas, etc. I wanted them to have a special valentine from JJ too. For this, I was sort of inspired by a combination of this pin:

I don't have the original source but I got the image from here.

 and what I did for Father's Day. I got the letters L, O, V, and E from Michaels and painted them red and pink. Then I set JJ up for a photoshoot. Much more difficult to get him to stay seated at 15 months than it was at 7 months. Here are some choice outtakes:

Yum.

I am just not interested.

What's down there??



Joe trying to snag Percy from his hands.

I then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to make a collage in Photoshop Elements. I thought I would just put together the 4 photos, but I realized the letters were a bit small and I wasn't sure I could get them all the same size and have JJ at the same proportion so I added a big shot in the middle with the word spelled out. I am getting better at adding text (can you tell from the pins Shannon and I have be making?) so I added the little message on the right. Here is my final product:

 

The red shirt/red letter combination wasn't a great idea and I probably should have put some shoes on the kid too, but I didn't want him to get excited and think we were going bye-byes. It could totally use some work, but I didn't think it was too bad for my first "project". I think his grandmas, aunts, and everyone else liked them.

We hope everyone has a wonderful, love filled Valentine's Day! <3