Valentine Morning

Happy Day of Love!! This time of year is bittersweet for me. Simply because our youth group puts on a Valentine's Banquet and so I end up with legs that won't work because I've been on them all week and tension headaches from the stress of things going wrong or not working and just plain tiredness people!! What? Did you think I was going to tell some sad sappy story??

However then the actual event comes and things work out and people have a blast & I'm surrounded by amazing church family helping us clean up and my heart is warmed and it makes all the aforementioned pains worth it. 

So now knowing the week I have I'm proud of myself for still pulling off a sweet morning for my kiddos! And you can now fully appreciate how easy and simple it is if my sleep-deprived, leg-aching self could do it!

Step 1. Cut canned cinnamon rolls into spirals (because no they don't come like that! How rude huh?!) 

Step 2. Fold the ends together into a heart shape. Then bake as normal.

Step 3. Ice them and toss on some pretty pink and red sprinkles!

Step 4. Pair these with some strawberry milk (cute swirl straws are optional)!

My kids loved it! Inside their boxes were some chocolates, sweethearts and nail polish for my girly girl and baseball cards for my boy! So simple and I picked all of it up at Walgreens actually. 

Enjoy your family & friends surrounding you today! 

"We love because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Totally Cute and Clever Printable Valentine's!!

This blog captured some of the cutest Valentine ideas I've seen in awhile and the best part is they are all free printables!! I found two for my kiddos this year, maybe you can find one too! In case you aren't sure here is a couple of the ideas they have there:

Just click the big pink logo at top to go see them!

Valentine's Ideas

Yes I realize it is March. Yes I realize Valentine's was almost a month ago but if I tried to save these cute ideas we did until next year JUST to post them BEFORE the holiday then I'd forget. Trust me I would. I'm like that. So I thought I'll post them now and YOU can try to save the idea somewhere until next year! Cruel aren't I?

First I had to share this picture of my daughter in her preschool class. They do the classic Ice-Cream party where you collect every imaginable horribly sweet junk food you can find and let the kids make their own sundaes!

This is not for the faint of heart I will warn. Huge amounts of sugar are sure to be devoured by your little one! You've been warned.

As for my class with my energetic 2 year old's I started the morning with heart shaving cream trays!Just make hearts with your shaving cream and place a plastic car beside it for them to vroom around in it with and get nice and messy! And believe it or not when the two year old's had the trays versus putting the shaving cream directly on the table (which I'm known to do at times) they did keep it pretty well contained to their tray and their space. This even helped keep it off their clothes a little more! Huge accomplishment in my eyes.

We read lots of cute books which I really should have taken a picture of but I remember one was Corduroy's Valentine's Day and another one was Elmo's Fuzzy Valentine. Cute books and age appropriate. And we did too much art to explain but the one I wanted to share was this VERY simple idea for a card from your little one:

Make their hand prints where their thumbs face down and their pointer fingers almost touch and you will have a heart shape in the middle!! I glued a heart in the space to make sure the parents saw the heart shape. This would be easy to do for grandparents or aunts and uncles and pop it in the mail. This was a SIMPLE version but you could really jazz it up some and make it look even nicer. Happy crafting!

Valentine's Day Bulletin Board Idea

Here is a simple and cute bulletin board idea for the toddler classroom. The way it is shown here is by taking a coloring page of I think it's Tenderheart bear?? and having each child color their bear (pink for the girls and blue for the boys) Then I took ink stamp pads and put the kids thumbprints in the heart on the tummy and the pads on the paws and ears.

I used pink for the girls and purple for the boys.

Other alterations could include:

1. Printing out the kids faces and gluing them onto the Care Bear's face so it's literally YOUR students on the board!

2. If kids are older you can have them paint or decorate with something fuzzy like yarn or cornmeal or sugar (just dye the cornmeal or sugar to desired color).

3. If you have a small enough group print out all the different Care Bears (tenderheart, hugs and tugs, braveheart, grumpy, etc...) and each child can be THAT Care Bear!

Featured blog: Valentine's Crafts

I was trying to make myself wait one more day at least before doing another post because of course I have a ton of post ideas running through my head. But when I saw these cute craft ideas for kids I had to share it! If you have young kids and want to let them get creative and have a blast with your kids too visit Cassie & Co. blog for cute ideas like Number counting book and stained glass hearts!


And also since I'm on here I might as well share with you a dessert I also found blog hopping that as soon as my hubby walked in the door tonight I held my Droid phone up to him with a delectable picture of a Oreo Brownie with White Chocolate and declared "This is what I'm making for Valentine's Day!!" In case the name alone didn't get your taste buds salivating here is a picture of it:



It is from a new blog I just found tonight called "Two Peas and their Pod", a cooking blog. Check it out for numerous yummy recipes including this one!
Click HERE for the Oreo Cookie Brownie with White Chocolate recipe.