Bliss & Miscellaneous

Baby E and I are having a few friends over to make Valentines this week, so I thought I’d put together some Valentines for the kids in his playgroup and in his class at school.

Free printable files at the bottom of this post!

I chose to give them raisins and frosted animal cookies, rather than any sort of candy (not knowing what their parents allow or what they consider a choking hazard).

Raisin Valentines

I got the small boxes of raisins and wrapped in these cute wrappers.

Animal Cookies

The animal cookies I bagged in some cellophane bags and added some Target Dollar bin ribbon and a little tag.

Craft Time

Our playgroup is going to make some Valentines so I found this foam sticker craft pack at Target and added some Dollar Store Valentines stickers.

Baby E LOVES stickers right now so I figured if we had some left over it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, plus they’re a non-messy project for toddlers (which is kind of a must when you’re going to have a group of them doing something.

Toddler Valentine Coloring Card

Lastly I thought I’d make some cards that would be easy for the kids to decorate. Since they basically just scribble now I thought it would be cut to make a cut out card with an insert that they could color.

The card is just a fourth of a sheet of cardstock that is inserted behind the cut out. I figure they can leave the envelope blank or decorate it with stickers. These are super easy to put together, you could use colored cardstock for the envelope (white was what I had, plus I like the color scribbles with the white).

TIP: To make your toddler’s artwork more Valentine-y just give them the purple and pink crayons, since inevitably when I give Baby E a full box of crayons he always chooses the white and brown ones.

PRINTABLES HERE!

Click the image to download or right click and “Save Target As”.

Raisin Box Wrappers

Treat Bag Tags

These could also be used as cupcake toppers.

Toddler Printable Valentine Envelope

The inserted card is just 1/4 of a sheet of paper.

I recently send one of my dearest girlfriends her January gift.

What’s a January gift?
It’s a Christmas gift that never got completed prior to Christmas and once it was finished you realized the recipient was celebrating the holiday abroad and doesn’t return till the New Year…so you send it mid-January.

Personally, I like to give “useable” gifts, things that won’t just sit on a self or in a closet. So I created some personalized notecards for her.

 Since she’s in an industry that requires a lot of networking I figured these would be something nice for her to use either personally or professionally (which is why they’re silver, as her company branding uses a grey).

Each card featured a die-cut “K” for her first initial and was backed with a silver paper. I love the texture of the silver and the faux-debossed look that it gives the card. If you only need a handful, they’re much cheaper than getting something letterpressed. They have a similar feel to them and are pretty thick since they each use two pieces of cardstock mounted together. They’d look even more like letterpressed cards if they were backed with the same white paper, although the letter would be much more subtle.

Since I was creating some for her I figured I’d make a few for myself (I’m so thoughtful).

Plus it was a good way to get rid of some scrap cardstock that I’d been held on to, determined to find a use for.

I did several different colors for mine since they will probably go to friends or family. Such an easy project & I love that I can just make a few more whenever I need them.

Instructions:

Obviously, there aren’t many. This was a pretty easy project on my Silhouette Cameo – it may be possible to do with a handheld letter punch but I’m not sure.

I just set my cutter to cut out the letters and the white cards. Then spray mounted those to a sheet of silver cardstock and trimmed them out.

Cost:

I love letterpressed items but these are a much cheaper alternative if you only need a small quantity. Paper was around $6.00 ($.60/sheet for 10 sheets – 5 white, 5 silver) and the envelopes were from Hobby Lobby for $4.

So the whole project was less than $10!

I usually like taking treats to our neighbors at Christmas. So after my holiday party and Hot Cocoa Bar I was able to put together these cute boxes pretty easily.

I found these boxes at Micheal’s (they actually came with inserts for cupcakes – so I’ve stashed those away for another time). Good luck finding them now though, I went looking for some ribbon to finish up my wrapping and our local store looked like it had been cleaned out (they are the brand “Celebrate It”).

One of our neighbors has three children so filling a box full of cookies for them was no problem, however since our other neighbor is an older lady who lives alone I didn’t really want to load her up with a dozen cookies.

Instead I included a cup from the party with a bag of cocoa mix and another bag of toppings along with her cookies (since the cups came with lids it made it a great way to package it all together).

I really like these individual servings especially since there are usually a plethora of treats this time of year. It would make a great gift for an officemate since the cocoa could be made in an office microwave.