What do you do when you can’t decide what you want your birthday theme to be, unicorns or mermaids? You have them both of course. They go together right? Well, when you’re friend is a super talented cake designed, she sure makes them look like they belong together! My little was beyond over the moon for this birthday cake.

So when it came down to the mom made cake, I didn’t even want to try to ‘compete’. We did strawberry frosted donuts with candles, which was equally as special, and she thought it was even better than cake!

Here is a little sneak peek into the goody bags. We picked up some fun goodies from Target and the Dollar Store. A fun bubble wand, some flower shaped sunnies, bubbles, glow bracelets, a beach ball, and unicorn scratch paper, all loaded into a fun sand bucket shaped like a sand castle.

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We love Valentine’s Day. Our favorite holiday after Halloween. Growing up, I loved making Valentines for friends at school and looking at all the ones my friends made for me. When I had kids of my own, I renewed my love for Valentines – but last year, our school stopped allowing them to be exchanged at school. We still manage to have a lot of fun at home, and find ways to celebrate with friends. I found these cute Valentine doughnuts at Rocco’s for the kids as a fun surprise treat.

We do fun manicures at home with hearts on our nails!

We made these fun crafts for teachers last year. Pick up some paper mache heart ornaments from your local craft store and paint on a thin layer of mod podge. Add tissue paper squares and cover with another layer of mod podge for a shiny clear coat. This was for our visual arts teacher, so we hot glued some letter beads onto it spelling out “in my art era”. Cute as a Valentine, can double as a Christmas ornament.

We found these super cute conversation heart beads on Amazon and used them to make our own headbands. We bought plain headbands on Amazon, although you could certainly use ones you had laying around the house.

Add a little hot glue onto the headband to secure the beads.

How cute are these?

Another fun gift idea would be these Valentine Stanley cup tags. They’re so cute for teens and tweens. You can have them personalized with a name too! They’re available for 30oz. and 40oz. tumblers. Made by SHRH designs.

I saw Amber make these Valentine boxes and thought they were so adorable. After watching, we made our own version – check them out on my Instagram below.

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Our signature snack for Valentines are chocolate covered pretzels. We make them in all colors and with all different kinds of sprinkles, how cute are these ones with the word ‘love’?

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I love the snackle box trend, and think the Valentine snackle box is super cute. We found these at Target and they come in a few different designs. The “LOVE” and the “XOXO” styles were my personal favorite. We filled ours up with some colorful candy, but the sky is the limit on what you could add in here. Other ideas would be: pony and alphabet beads to make a friendship bracelet box, a container os slime on the side and fun sensory mix ins, or for that beauty product teen/tween you could fill the letters with those sample products that come in the flat pouches.

Tie everything up with a cute little bow – we picked this conversation heart ribbon right at our local Dollar Tree – and add a fun gift tag. Cute for kids, friends, teens/tweens and even teachers (make sure to throw a little gift card in too – punch a hole in the corner and tie it on to the bow!)

What would you fill your snackle box with?

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We always dream up new Valentine crafts for our friends. We picked up some inexpensive totes from our local craft store and used our Cricut to outline friend’s names on the bags. We threw in some Crayola fabric markers and it was up to each friend’s imagination to create the bag of their dreams. Perfect for snow gear for school!

For a school craft, we had all of these left over ceramic yogurt cups we were looking to reuse. We decided to make a heart flower bouquet. You will need ceramic yogurt cups, pipe cleaners, cut out hearts, paper shred and play dough.

First step, cut out five of the same size heart shapes. We used a heart shaped cutter, you could use a Cricut or trace hearts and use a scissor. Fold hearts in half. You make multiple flowers in different sizes or colors, use 5 hearts per flower.

Add glue to one half of the heart and stick to one half of a second heart.

When you get to the last heart, secure around pipe cleaner to make the “flower”. Add a ball of play dough in the bottom of the yogurt container to secure the flowers. Push pipe cleaner flowers into play dough to allow to stand up straight. Add as many stems as you’d like.

Share in the comments how you use your left over yogurt containers!

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Desserts are my favorite – I think you should eat them first. We bake desserts for friends for all the holidays, it’s our love language. I usually don’t make sandwich cookies of any kind, because I just can’t handle the extra step, but we had some fancy jam, and, these seemed like a fun idea for Leah.

My neighbor from growing up is the best baker. She makes these iced sugar cookies that I adore. She’s even given me the recipe, but I can’t make them taste as delicious as she makes them. So I patiently wait until Valentine’s Day, or my birthday, and I don’t even share them with my kids, that’s how much I adore them.

Cupcakes are our go to dessert to make in our house, the design options are pretty endless. We made these piped hearts with sugar crystals and plain vanilla frosted topped with jelly hearts.

When you want something besides a food options, I give those too. I made this up for my little. A heart belt bag from Target, sparkle boots from Target, Ooly scented stamp able markets, ooly chroma blend watercolors, Construction Site: You’re Just Right, an ice cream truck notebook, some fun bracelets, and some heart glasses that you add glow sticks to.

Another popular dessert that we make on Valentine’s Day are m&m cookies.

If you are looking for a fun and festive dessert, but are short on time, don’t be afraid to take a short cut. We bought mini ice cream sandwiches and rolled them in different sprinkles. They look like a million dollars, that you spent so much time on them, when really, it was under five minutes in the kitchen (most of which was spent unwrapping the paper).

I love all the containers from Bullseye’s Playground. I picked these up last year and filled them with all kinds of fun and colorful Valentine candy.

Another close up of the cupcakes, this batch in chocolate.

Last year Blackbird Doughnuts offered these cute chocolate chip cookies shaped like doughnuts.The kids adored these. Hope they bring them back for this year.

Another container from Bullseye’s Playground – we filled this one with our sprinkle cookies.

This glass Tupperware was from Target as well, but not the dollar section. Although I did pick up at the end of the season, so they were deeply discounted. One of my other shortcuts (shhh don’t tell anyone) is to get store bought brownies if I am short on time, and top with a delicious salted caramel sauce. It makes them seem very fancy. If you have a few extra minutes, but not a ton of time, you can fancy up some box mix by swirling in some sauce or peanut butter!

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I love a good m&m cookie on Valentine’s Day. They just give a good pop of color and a nice hearty cookie with a crunch on the outside that I love. Our neighbors love these too, they even request the crunchier the better

I know that snackle boxes are the new thing, but I love a good old fashioned muffin tin. Why not use what you have and not go out and get something new. And mine just happen to be pink!! Fill with all your favorite candy – a real mix of salty, sweet, gummy, hard, chocolate, crunchy, and maybe even throw a bowl of popcorn on the side just for good measure.

Usually I am a strict vanilla with vanilla cupcake kind of gal, but I do make exceptions on Valentine’s Day. I do love a strawberry frosting and the garnish, well the sky is the limit. I love these XO chocolate covered crackers, I love the Valentine Candy that is available, m&m’s, anything Reese’s….and while I don’t actually like the taste of conversation hearts, they do sure make a cute decoration.

These Crescent Ridge cupcakes come as a six pack and can be in your weekly delivery for $16.50 a package. They start with a brownie base and are topped with vanilla or cookie dough ice cream. Top with some whip and sprinkles and you are good to go! Chef’s kiss.

They did at one point last year do a collaboration of a red velvet ice cream whoopie that was kind of knock your socks off….this year they are doing a gingerbread one, which I like….just not as much. They also have a peppermint ice cream sandwich option which is enough to rock your world. Did I mention they can get delivered to your door?

Ok, Simple heart sugar cookie heart cut out. My neighbor growing up makes these. She gave me the recipe. I follow it to the precise T. They NEVER come out the same. Im convinced that she left one key thing out so that I can’t ever make them as good…. The frosting is light a sugary, but not TOO sweet, and when I was at college and I was missing being at home….I would legit eat the whole tin in one sitting. But let’s not unpack all that psychology right now.

As I mentioned in a previous Valentine post, I rarely have time to make from scratch brownies, so I like to fancy up box brownies. One way would be to cut then out into shapes. I do like this option, but there is a lot of waste. And by waste, I mean, add to my waist-line. But I cut this batch up into hearts and I think they are just thge cutest things in the whole world.

Keep them plain, as is, of you can add a little frosting. Make from scratch, or if you are in a hurry, put premade frosting into a piping bag and add a little to the tops of the hearts and cover with fun sprinkles.

Here are some fun rainbow ones I tried to make cute.

Another fun thing that we sometimes do at our house is sheetpan pancakes. SO we tried to make then and then cut then out and make them into fun shapes because I certainly can’t compete with my son’s friend’s dad who can whip up colored pancakes every weekend. I mean, we all have our strengths…

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Are you always trying to keep things new and exciting for your kids? I can never keep up with all the things they see on social media. I tried to get a little crafty and take some inspiration from those ornament wreaths I saw over Christmas. I whipped out the hot glue gun and started attaching the cute heart containers to a heart wreath from the Dollar Store. Each heart had something fun inside (nothing too crazy): a little candy Swedish Fish, Lindt truffles, gummy nerds, sweet and sour hearts. I added some non candy treats as well – some conversation heart stickers, a few heart poppers, a slinky, a disco heart keychain, a small eraser, some ninja bounce balls and even a little Starbucks gift card shaped like a conversation heart. Go as big or as little as you want – but make it fun and personalized.

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When I had my first, I thought I was pretty crafty. I handmade my kid’s Valentine’s for school, no store bought for this family. By the time my second came around, I was still feeling pretty proud of myself, until she came home from school and she had this Valentine of a sheep, like the one above, with pompoms glued on to it. It was from a boy mom, first child. IMPRESSIVE. It stuck with me. Still has, to this day. So when we had to do our 100 days of school craft, for some reason, this popped into my head. I looked up a picture of a sheep on Google, printed it out on my Cricut, ironed it onto a shirt, and hot glued 100 pom poms onto the body of the sheep.

What is your 100 Day of School craft?

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I always like to pick up discounted Valentine merch at the end of the season. I found these at Home Goods last year – filled with gummy candy, which I promptly threw out. The piñatas themselves were still good and we filled them with out own treats (fresh ones!) to give to friends this year. How cute are they?

If you can’t find these, you could also make them inexpensively. Pick up some heart shaped boxes at the end of the season (you can find them at Michaels for about $1) and then cover with fringed tissue paper to make your own.

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To celebrate the Chinese New Year, Leah invited us over to make dumplings at her house. The kids and I took over her kitchen and we got to work.

The kids liked the pork dumplings, but we also made a mushroom version for Henry and Dan.

The kids had the best time scooping and filling. They tried to pinch the dumplings, and even came up with some new shapes and ideas of their own. The “pizza” style became popular towards the end!

Leah made these dumplings, look at how well they are folded! Best part of the day, definitely the taste testing!

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