5 Miles

Last week, during one of our snow days, we finally began working on Valentines for the boys class parties. When you have boys, this is what you get to see lots of:

I was surprised Alex wanted to write all the names for all the kids in his class.  The previous two years Valentines have been a 2-3 day process for Will because he gots tired of it after about 5 and wanted to be done (back when he was 4 or 5). Now that he’s in Kindergarten he lasted much longer, but still asked me to do his last 4 or 5 (I refused, but there are 21 kids in his class, only 15 in Alex’s).  I did learn we need to work on the letter “S” and “H” with Alex (His H looked like an N).

I also wanted to have something a bit more girly & crafty to decorate the house. When I saw this craft idea, I was sold (since I have LOTS of red and pink scrapbook paper I don’t get to use too often).  So the boys helped me cut out hearts (I didn’t touch Will’s, but I did go back and trim Alex’s), and then we glued them together (because I wanted them to look pretty on both sides, and most of my scrapbook paper was blank on the back).

After lunch, I pulled out the sewing machine and starting sewing these into garlands or chains.  The boys decorated them once I was done (but I didn’t plan ahead too well so didn’t have much to decorate them with that were Valentine themed… I overheard Alex coloring a green and yellow snake on one of his.)  I wanted to get a picture of the sewing part of the process, but it was too hard to sew and take a picture at the same time! (I would say the double layer of paper & the use of some cardstock did cause some problems. I’d recommend only using one layer or not as thick paper if you’re going to do it because when I’d get to the card stock the thread would break, so some people’s chains were a bit messy in the thread areas, sorry!)

We ended up with a number of cool chains. The boys picked out ones to give to teachers and I have 1-2 I still get to enjoy.  It was quite a fun craft!