Sharing a little LOVE

Valentine's Day this year was here and gone so quickly now that both kids are in school all day and have after school activities every day. Despite the fact that they were out of the house more hours than not, we started our day celebrating!

I did a little more and was a little better prepared last year (you can view last year's festivities HERE). This year I did start the day with a special breakfast and decorated the table the night before. For every special holiday my kids race out of their beds into the kitchen to check out our kitchen table.

This year I found these adorable plates and small dishes at Target for their special pancake breakfast. I wish I could say that I made them a fancy breakfast every morning before school, but the mornings are just too crazy.  I used some heart paper doilies we had on hand as the place mats and our red and pink cups we have always had (also from Target...love them!)

Last year my husband and I spent time writing on hearts some things we loved about each of them and we pasted them all over their doors.  They loved it!

Well my kids have become spoiled and never want the exact same idea twice.  Geez....so I just wrote a few hearts and put them on the table this year because I still loved the sentiment of the hearts.

Every year I buy them each a few little things for Valentine's and a very small amount of candy.   They  honestly are not big candy kids, but they love the little toys and other goodies.   I forgot to take a picture of this part.   Normally I would put their goodies on the table for them, but since I had to have a new idea I made a secret decoder and a secret message.  I found the idea HERE.

Here are their secret messages before they figured them out with their decoders...

They had to find the letter that I wrote in the message on the outside of the circle and the letter that was beneath it in the inside of the circle was the letter they wrote to solve the message.  Here is the after...

Not only were they secret messages, but they were cute poems that I found HERE.  They LOVED this idea and had so much fun!

The first one was simple because my son is just learning to read.  It said:

Full of red and pink

To find your gift 

Look under the _ _ _ _.   (the blank was sink)

The second one for my daughter read:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

To find your gift

Look by my _ _ _ _ _. (the blank was shoes)

In addition to their breakfast kick-off celebration, we had our school Valentine's.   This year only my son needed them because they no longer do the traditional exchange in middle school.  We found our ideas on Pinterest and you can find the links HERE and HERE.

For the boys... Start Wars Lego with glow sticks.

For the girls....glow sticks too.  Simple and fun.

For the teachers (I forgot to get a picture of the finished product) we made a bouquet of tissue paper flowers like these...

This is a terrible picture of them, but they are super easy to make.  I have made the bigger pom pom version for my daughter's room also.

Here are some great instructions to make the smaller flower version and a better picture.

(source)

we added the little bouquet to a pretty mug and added this (our own version of course).

(source)

All in all it was a great Valentine's Day!  I hope you enjoyed a day filled with love.

Poshed Up