Last Minute Printable Valentines

Love printable Valentine's Day cards by Bunny Cakes.

Don’t give up if you haven’t had a chance to get a card for your Valentine! Here are some gorgeous printable valentines from Bunny Cake. Her lovely designs make your home-made valentine classy and professional. Plus, you can do it all from your computer! Click here for the PDf file and instructions.

Adorable cards you can print for free.

Photos by Bunny Cakes.

Make Fairy Flower Lights

Make Fairy Flower Lights from Recycled Egg Cartons

This is an amazing repurposing craft! How adorable are these lights and you’ll be repurposing those egg cartons at the same time. This easy craft from Espirit Cabane has such a short suppply list (less than 5) that you probably already have lying around your house: egg cartons, scissors, a string of LED christmas lights, and a hole-punch (optional). What a creative way to repurpose egg cartons and make something lovely for your bedroom or to drape in your kid’s room for some twinkly fairy lights. Get the full instructions here.

Photo by Espirit Cabane.

Teaching Your Preschooler the Value of Money with a Chore Chart

There is a parenting debate about whether you should teach your children that they should do chores simply because they are a member of the household or if they should get compensation or paid for doing chores. If you go one way, your child might think that they are entitled to receiving a certain amount of spending money regardless of their contributions to the house. If you go the other way, your child thinks that they should be paid for everything they do and don’t learn that they have obligations and duties as a member of a household.

After considering both sides of this issue, I think that allowances should be contingent on work performed for these reasons:

• Children should learn that you need to earn money. That it comes with hard work and dedication. That it takes effort to work, earn, and save enough money to purchase what you want. Yes, they should do things as a member of the family, but it is also useful to show them that they can earn some rewards for their efforts.
• Children learn how to manage the money they earn.

To test my theory (although I won’t be able to judge for sure if this works until my children are adults with savings accounts), I’ve decided to implement a chore chart for my four-year-old son, Jonas, to use. My middle child is quite three years old; so, this really hasn’t made any sense to him, but Jonas is VERY excited by this idea.

We printed out a chore chart from Simplemom.net, cut out the chores, and pasted them on. Then, Jonas happily performed a variety of the chores in exchange for a check mark in the box (which he was allowed to make as well). Each check mark could be exchanged for a nickel or 5 minutes of playing a video game or computer game (redeemable only only on certain days and in specific quantities - e.g. 30 minutes).

The chore chart is working lovely so far. Jonas is excited to do his chores - even asks to do them! He happily marks his sheet and waits anxiously for the weekend to redeem them. His first week he traded half for time to play his favorite video game and half for coins he counted into his piggy bank. This week he traded his points in for money to purchase a small toy.

Try it with your child and let me know how it works for you! If you want a chart you can just print out and skip the cutting and pasting, try FlipFlop and Applesauce’s chore chart.

Make Paper Hearts

Make paper hearts for a lovely display.

Here’s another great inexpensive idea for Valentine’s Day. Using pieces of paper that you might already have in your craft stash, you can easily make these paper hearts to decorate your space. Sweet and inexpensive. You only need pretty paper, scissors, and tape or glue. Go to Flip Flops and Applesauce for the complete instructions.

To display, punch a hole in the corner and string several along on a pretty ribbon or some string or yarn. Hang in front of your window, on your bulletin board, or on a cubicle wall for some love no matter where you are!

Photo by Flip Flops and Applesauce.

Easy Valentine’s Day Treat

Easy to make Valentine's Day recipe for all ages

Looking for an easy Valentine’s Day craft or project? This recipe from Make and Takes is a winner in my book. It includes less than five ingredients, doesn’t involve much cooking, and is a project that my preschool kids can do with me. All you’ll need is pretzels, chocolate to melt (white chocolate and milk chocolate), wax paper, toothpicks, and sprinkles. Use food coloring in the white chocolate to get that lovely pink or try mixing it with some blue, yellow, or green for some fun spring colors.

Simple ingredients you probably already have in your pantry.

Although most of these will probably get eaten by the kids as soon as they are done, you can save some to pack away in some little bags or little boxes to give away as an inexpensive teacher’s gift or a gift to any friend! Click here for the full recipe and how-to-do-it instructions.

Wrap it up for the perfect little V-Day gift for a teacher, friend, office mate, or neighbor.