Crazy Cool Valentine

Don’t you just love it when you get inspired and then things fall together quickly, easily, and well ahead of schedule?!  After more than a month of scrambling to stay on top of things or just going with the flow and “playing” practically non-stop I have to admit that a part of me has been very happy to settle into our more regular routine this week and even better, I’ve found myself with some time to not only catch up but get ahead of a lot of things.  In the past few days I have worked on a lot of gifts, which I can’t share here (yet) but I can show off the Valentines I put together for the kids’ teachers and classmates.  A whole month before they are needed – that’s like a blogger timeline, which I am almost never ahead of the curve enough to follow 😉

With my oldest is in middle school, I only needed one set of classroom Valentines which is great because my son has a rather large class of 27 this year and that felt like plenty.  For classmate gifts, I often try to do something a little unique and with the added bonus of using something lower in sugar if possible (not that I’m one of those moms – and no offense if you are.  I just have a lot of other priorities and worrying if my kids get a little too much sugar now and then isn’t one of them).  So I was doing my usual pre-hoilday browsing through my Pinterest boards and ran across this great printable (found here) and knew that was what I wanted to do this year.  I’m all for quick and easy projects, and if someone has done the adorable prep work ahead of time, I’m all for it.

It was a pretty simple matter to add the “love, Tyler” sentiment (in Paint) and print the tags out, 9 to a page. I cut a couple of slits in the tag to slide the straw through and stapled the Kool-aid packets to the back of the tag.  The whole process took under 30 minutes, most of which was done while watching Arrow with the husband (our new Go To show when we have the chance to watch TV together.  Gotta love Netflix).

With the classmate Valentines complete, I figured I would eventually run across a great idea for the teachers – and I did!  I was in TJ Maxx the other day checking out the kitchen section since my daughter has requested some divided containers for her lunchbox.  In the past I have put together quite a few great teacher gifts using cups, mugs, or water bottles (see those fun ideas here and here and here), but having just done something like that for the current set of teachers for Christmas (see this idea) I hit the container aisle before the glass/bottle aisle and discovered these fantastic lunchbox containers with the ice packs in their lids.  And it hit me – these are quite literally “cool” and fit in perfectly with the theme I already had going on with the classmate Valentines – how perfect is that?!  Not only could I use the same tags, but I felt like the lunchbox containers were something the teachers would actually have a use for and not something they would typically be given as a gift.  So I grabbed a set and split it in half for the two teachers.

Again, a quick change to the tags I already had – changing the “kool” to “cool”  (the font is called Jokerman, in case you are wondering) and tied them together with ribbon.  Easy peasy!  And totally adorable, right?

I can now sit back and wait for Valentine’s Day without worrying about scrambling for an idea at the last minute – and you can too!  I’d love to hear about it (and see photos!) if you use this idea, or if you have a great idea I can use for next year 😉

Next up on the list of things to plan and create – my very first care package for this deployment.  Oh boy…
Linking to: Tip Me Tuesday, Made By You Monday, Lou Lou Girls, Home Matters Party, Pretty Pintastic Party, BFF Open House,