My favorite part of Valentine’s Day has always been the elementary school Valentine swap! When I was little, I loved when we got to make giant, heart-shaped paper envelopes or shoe-boxes covered with tissue paper and stickers for our classmates to stuff little tokens of friendship into. I loved opening each little envelope and each cute, store-bought valentine folded in half and sealed with a shiny, red heart sticker. I loved hunting for conversation hearts and heart-shaped cherry suckers and red hots and those puffy chocolate hearts filled with peanut butter.
Now that my kids are in school, I still look forward to the classroom Valentine swap, but now my favorite part isn’t the candy or the handmade mailboxes, it’s the cute Valentines! I’ve tried my hand at making them for my kids in the past, but they always turn out just a little less cute than I envisioned, and they inevitably take mommy all day to put together! Luckily, Minted, my favorite place to buy family Christmas cards (and other good stuff), has adorable classroom Valentines this year! I let my kids look through the website and pick their favorites, then we customized them with their names and a cute picture, and they magically appeared on our doorstep a few days later. Here’s what we came up with:
I think my sweet little preschooler was pretty grateful that she only had to write her 15 classmates’ names on the Valentines and not her own name too! We punched a hole in one corner, and used ribbon from the craft store to attach a little bag of gummy peach rings to each one. And we tried not to eat too many while we were working! {You’re A Peach Valentines}
My little tomboy stayed away from anything even remotely girly, of course. She told me she wanted something that said “You Rock” so that we could stick Pop Rocks to the back. She certainly knows her own mind! All I had to do was find the Pop Rocks (at World Market) and bust into my stash of washi tape–she did the rest by herself. {You Rock Valentines}
Thank you, Minted, for providing the classroom Valentines; we can’t wait to share them with our friends next week! If you’d like to order Valentines from Minted this year, order by Saturday to receive yours by the 13th.