Valentine's Week

In spite of the 18 inches of snow outside our front door, it is a lovely day today. However, Jilly and I had some catch-up work to do in preparation for Valentine's Day. We started early this morning finalizing Valentine cards to get in the mail and made a couple of other crafts. I knew that I was on the right track when JillyBean looked up at me, smiled and said, "mommy, I have so much fun with you." It made my heart melt.
First things first, we had to complete the Valentine's cards that we started a couple of weeks ago. I got the idea from the February issue of Martha Stewart's Living. These cards were made by rolling up pieces of corrugated cardboard and turning them into stamps. Martha's idea was that they would look like roses (you can also cut a piece of cork to make the stem), but I thought that they turned out looking like hearts, which was perfect.

Jilly dabbed the stamps in red ink and went to town. Each person who receives one of her cards this year gets an original and no two are alike. As I mentioned, we did these a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if it was the paper that we used or if she overdid it on the ink, but they needed some time to dry before flipping them over to complete.
On the other side, we wrote a personalized Happy Valentine's Day note to each recipient, attached a photo and stuck on a couple of festive stickers. I think that they're cute and unique and will be cherished by each family member and friend who receives one. Plus, other than the writing, the cards were completely decorated and designed by Jilly. I didn't give any suggestions to her about the amount of ink she used or the placement or amount of stamping she did. She was very proud of the final product as well.

In addition, Jilly and I completed our Valentine chandelier that I mentioned last week. It turned out just as lovely as I had hoped and spices up the dining room quite nicely. We decided to hang it in there to surprise Daddy when he gets home tonight. Hopefully he'll notice. Jilly helped glue the hearts together with her trusty glue stick. She is such a pro!

Spending a morning doing crafts with Jilly is one of my favorite things to do. It gives us time to work together and talk about not only what we are doing at that moment but other things going on around us. I treasure mornings like this.