Valentine Crafting

This year Valentine's day was extra special, because now I have not just one precious girl to spoil, but two!  Oh and of course my husband too, but really, once you have kids it's all about them :)  I think my toddler's new favorite holiday is Valentine's day because of all the extra candy and chocolate! 

And to prepare this year for the big event, I decided to give out non-candy Valentine's.  So I searched online for ideas and of course did the Pinterest thing.  And all I have to say about the P site is to not ever let Pinterest scare you as a mom.   Just get on, find what you want and don't obsess  Oh, and don't ever think you aren't doing enough as the perfect crafty momma that you see scattered across those pages.  No one has that much time on their hands to do all of those homemade things or mom projects.  If your crazy life as a parent is anything like mine, your only free time is when the kids go to bed and then it's a rush to get everything done and be in bed by 12am... Ok I digress...

So I finally decided on a pretty easy Valentine, Crayon Hearts!  (and my friend Erin made these last year and were a big hit at our house :)  I figured my daughter would love make them with me as a fun mom and daughter project too, as crayons are her favorite art medium these days.  Here are the step by steps that I put together from several recipe sites in case you are interested:

1) First buy or get together a bunch of crayons and put them in a bowl of hot water.  This helps get the paper wrappers off really fast.  See how that pink one is already peeling off? 

2) Then decide on what color hearts you want and break them into pieces to fit into a heart shaped mold.  I first bought a silicone heart shape by Wilton and it make extra deep crayons, but then it started getting this white filmy stuff on it and would not come off!  If anyone has experience baking with silicone, please let me know how to get that white stuff off.

So I bought a metal woopie pie mold and it worked great.  Make sure you first spray with cooking spray in each tin before you put the crayons in them.  I decided to color coordinate with all pinks/reds together, purples/blues, yellows/greens, etc. 

3) Bake them in a 250 degreed oven for about 10-15 minutes, or until melted.  Don't overcook them.  Remove from oven and let them cool for about an hour before trying to pop them out.  Once cool, use a butter knife to pop them out.  You can see the difference in the molds below.  The one on the left (blue) is in the woopie pie pan and the one on the right is the one from the silicon pan.

4) Then put them in little treat bags and attach your own saying (I have a few suggestions below).  I ordered some stickers awhile back from Etsy with my child's name on it before I decided on what we were going to hand out, but they worked out really well! 

I also used a few printables and stapled them onto the treat bags:

Here are a few cute sayings you can make for your heart valentines: 

"You Make My Heart Melt" ( you can even glue the crayon heart onto this free printable card)
"You Color My World" and click here for a link for a free printable
"Color Your Heart Out"

We had so much fun at her school's Valentine party that day.  The teachers had the kids decorate shoe boxes that we put the Valentines inside and then they had a few games to play like Conversation Heart color sorting.  We can't wait for next year!