Be My Valentine; crafting with kids

Welcome back to the Julia Young Photography journal!

As the short month of February begins, we are quickly surrounded with all things red and pink as we prepare to spread love and joy all around us for St. Valentine’s Day! Here at the Young home, our February unfortunately began with a house full of the sick kiddos (and eventually mom and dad too!).

Recently during one of our snowy sick days home from school, we read books, we played dominos, and I even got the littles to help out with the laundry! However, by mid afternoon, I was desperate to find a fun project that would bring us all some entertainment and cheer…school Valentines for the win!  

For those of you who know me, I love a good craft project and find it SO fun to focus on all the little details and see a creative vision become reality. I love making people happy and any excuse I have to make a fun craft or project for someone else brings me so much joy!

Growing up in Germany, we never celebrate Valentine’s Day like we do here in the U.S. so the customs surrounding this holiday took me some time to get used to once I moved here! Now that my littles are starting school, we started our own tradition of hand making Valentine’s Day gifts for their classmates and friends at school and I have to say, it’s become such a fun activity that I look forward to each year!

Our idea for this year was surrounded by the theme of XOX and we decided to create bookmarks with a printed tic-tac-toe game on the back! Of course no Valentine is complete without candy, so we included some M&Ms to use for the game!

My boys really got into the project and were so helpful while Charlotte cheered us all on and helped as much as she could. Of course I contributed as the head photographer 🙂 Lukas sewed 50 little plastic bags with the sewing machine, punched holes and  filled bags while Liam sorted M&M’s by color and helped cut the ribbons.

It was a fun filled afternoon despite the circumstances and the littles cannot wait to share their Valentine bookmarks at school this week!

Hope your Valentine’s Day is filled with joy and love…and a little bit of chocolate! 😉  Thanks for following along with another adventure here at Julia Young Photography!

Love,

Julia