It was a happy {{heart}} day!

A lot of people don’t like Valentine’s Day – who says retail stores should dictate when a person shows love, anyhow? I rather like Valentine’s Day, however. It all started back when I was a former teacher/young stay-home mom with two young daughters and had lots of close friends who were also former teachers/young stay-home moms with young children. We started having Valentine parties and everyone would dress in red & pink & white and they would exchange Valentines (which the moms made, for the most part, fulfilling our desire to do classroom-type crafts) and we would eat and chat while the kids played. So Valentine’s Day holds a special place in my heart.

This year was a good Valentine’s Day, though we didn’t have any parties with friends. The girls (except for Sarah) made iPhone Valentines out of candy heart boxes for their classmates (& I made them for my Kindergarteners, too!) Sorry, no picture!

I made some love cookies for the loves of my life:

We gave primroses to teachers:

The kids all wore red & pink to school, as evidenced here by Becca’s 2nd grade class:

We had our traditional chocolate fondue after dinner:

Ed, very thoughtfully, gave me a Woods card:

By the way, did you know that Logos Bible Software won the Biggest Fan contest that Woods Coffee had this past week as part of their anniversary celebration? You can view part of their entry here. And no, Ed didn’t go down and sing. He’s not young or hip enough, as you can tell from the video. Congrats, Logos! The Woods Coffee is also giving away a free iPad every Thursday and a trip to Hawaii at the end of the month, which I am planning on winning.

Recently I saw, either on a blog or on Pinterest, a piece of wall décor that I wanted to make for Ed for Valentine’s Day. I searched high and low for what I needed, but ended up having to order one of the pieces at Hobby Lobby online in order to complete the project. In the process, I found out that Hobby Lobby is opening in Everett at the end of this month! Woo-hoo! Me and my friend Dee are going to go with all our girlies over mid-winter break, (well, not Katie, because she’s not old enough to appreciate a massive home décor/craft store yet).

Anyway, the first piece arrived from HL and it was broken!! I called, and HL, being the amazing company that it is, immediately offered to send me a new one, rush shipping, no charge. I crossed my fingers that it would arrive in time for me to complete the project, and it did, just barely. I literally finished hanging the piece 5 minutes before Ed got home from work on Valentine’s Day!

Wanna see it?

I absolutely love how it turned out. I originally intended for the frame to be horizontal and not vertical, and I thought the frame I bought would be big enough, but it wasn’t quite, and there wasn’t time to look for another one (I bought that one on the day before Valentine’s at Value Village!) I am so happy it worked vertically and I was able to have it ready in time for Valentine’s Day and the best part is that Ed noticed it right away and I think he likes it!

Onto other Valentine’s Day news:

In Junior High, during Valentine’s week, the boys wear paper hearts around their neck one day and the girls the next. If you’re wearing a heart, you’re not supposed to talk to a member of the opposite sex the entire day. If you do, you have to surrender your heart to them.

Guess what? My girl came home with her heart and gave it to her daddy. LoVe.

What I really love is that she also has written on her heart, “God holds my heart”, “I {{heart}} my Savior” and “TLMMTJ”, which stands for “Tom Likes Muffins More Than Johnny.”  Um, yeah. I have no idea about that one.

It turned out to be a very happy {{heart}} day for Five Girls and their Guy.