The Crazy Simple Life

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, passing out Valentines amounted to stuffing a small folded card into an envelope taped to the front of your desk, which you had created minutes before from a large piece of pink construction paper. That doesn’t seem to do it these days! Every Valentine comes with a piece of candy, a tiny toy, a set of heart shaped temporary tattoos that say “I’m stuck on you.” So, over the next three Fridays, I’m giving you a FREE printable non-candy Valentine idea.

Our first Valentine is a fabulous method for reusing all the broken, teeny crayon stubs your children never want. This activity comes from the Disney Family Fun website. You can find the instructions by clicking here:

Here are some tips after having made them myself:

• You can remove the crayon wrappers more quickly if you run a box cutter or Exacto knife down the side lengthwise. Just watch your fingers! (Definitely a task for the adult.)

• Breaking the crayons into smaller pieces is less messy. However, if you chop them up with a knife, it’s faster and you can get a lot more color variety in each heart.

• Don’t overfill each heart, half to 2/3rds full is sufficient. If you make the crayons too thick (like I did) it’s difficult to get the cards to fold over them.

• When it comes out of the oven, it’s going to look kind of ugly on top. For some reason the brownish-orangey colors seem to rise to the top during baking. I promise, when you flip it over you will see a beautiful array of colors.

• Wait for the crayons to completely cool before removing them from the tins or silicone pans. As they cool, they contract and pull away from the sides, making them much easier to remove. And by the way, this will stain your silicone pans.
  

Next, print up your Crayon Valentine Card freebies! These were designed to accommodate crayon hearts up to 1.5 inches across. Cut the cards out so that you have white box on the left (the back of the card) and the colored side on the right (the front of the card). Each sheet makes 6 cards.

Fill out the cards. Then, use double-sided foam tape or tacky clay to adhere the crayon to the inside back of the card.

Ta-da! I’m planning to use this for my son’s daycare room and can’t wait to see the reaction on all those two year-old's faces! Enjoy!

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