My girls LOVE a good craft. I will admit that Ella has asked why we don’t just buy a box of Valentines at the grocery store, but when I offer a craft as an alternative, she jumps right on board. There is nothing better that playing with paper and scissors when it’s too cold to go outside.
Since the girls will exchange Valentines at school and at dance, we opted for a few different designs. Ella’s cards were appropriate for both groups, but for Sophie’s friends, we had to make two different treats. Here is how we turned this basket of goodies into three super-cute Valentine’s Day treats for our friends!
For Sophie’s “school” we decided to give fruit squeezes because there is a pretty wide range of ages. I bought strawberry Go-Go Squeezes and made a printable file that says “Hey, Valentine, you’re my main squeeze!” I laid them out in Illustrator and printed them 9 per page. I had some tiny fingers that wanted to help with the cutting and fortunately she didn’t cut her own hair this time!
Once we got everything cut out, I punched tiny holes in the cards while Sophie opened the box of fruit squeezes and cut some baker’s twine to length.
I toyed around with using washi tape or hot glue to adhere the cards, but in the end, tying a pretty bow worked out just fine. How adorable is this girl and her treats?
Next up were Sophie’s dance treats. I really wanted to play up the “dance” angle, but I didn’t see any great inspiration on Pinterest. I did see a greeting card that said something about “making my heart dance” and it ultimately inspired these sweet treats. I knew the twizzler sticks would be twirly, so we went with a ballerina design that says, “Hey, Valentine, you make me want to twirl!”
The girls helped me cut the cards out and then I added a slit at the top and bottom of each card with an exacto knife and a self-healing rubber mat.
And once again our model wanted to show them off.
Last on our Valentine’s Day to do list, were Ella’s treats. She loves to play Tic-Tac-Toe with her daddy any time we go out to a restaurant, so I decided to play on that idea. I saw a similar idea on the web, but designed my own card to use with M&Ms.
Ella sorted the pink and red M&Ms and placed five candies, in two different colors, in each of the plastic bags. Wilton makes these candy bags that aren’t as long as most cello bags and we definitely preferred these. Of course, we ran out and had to trim down some full sized cello bags, so that would work, too!
I went behind her and added the Tic-Tac-Toe boards behind the M&Ms. How cute are these?
We used patterned Washi tape to close the bags on the back and VOILA! All done.
