Last year we made Valentines and they turned out delightful.

The following is a repost from last year when, in the 11th hour, we decided to rock some serious DIY Valentine's Day action...

It's late. It's Thursday. Figuring out valentines with four kids has been... more than I expected it to be and now I am realizing that this is just the beginning... Of purchasing 120 valentines and 120 "treats" to go on them and then, you know, overseeing the assembly line of signatures and uhhhhhhh...!?

This was the first year ever, in my parenting career, that I went above and beyond the usual drugstore valentines box. For the big kids, anyway. 

ED:  I tried with the twins, but gave up after one try because they're three and, well... they do not care about awesome homemade valentines. They DO care about Elsa and Anna, however. So... back to plan A we went. 

I got the photo-card idea from Kristen (thanks, Kristen!) and then, after snapping photos of Archer and Fable with what limited props we could come up with, I modified Kristen's photo strip creation to work with the photo apps I already had on my phone (Pic Stitch for the four squares, Squareready to add the extra room on the bottom, Afterlight for the 4x6 cropping.) 

After creating 4x6 cards, I had them printed at my local photo printing shop, which also happens to be THE greatest photo printing shop in Los Angeles.  Marvin, the owner is magic.

And then the kids filled them out, signed them, taped chocolate hearts to the bottom and voila. 

(And by "voila" I mean, "drahmah" because it took a very long time and, we, of course, waited until the very last minute, and, well... hi.) 

Still. It was totally worth it and now I feel like this is something we can do for various occasions, you know? I feel like I have more confidence for craft this week than I did last week. Feels good.

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