Happy Love day y'all

I'm going to confess something to you.

are you ready?

I waited until 8:00 pm on the night before Valentine's Day to take my school-age kiddo to Target to pick out some V-day cards.

Yes, I could have made him take free ones I found online to his classmates, but I'd planned all along to let him go with me and choose, and, well.....

it never happened.

Until tonight.

Do you know what the Valentine section at Target looks like at 8:00 pm the night before the big day?

It's a hot mess.

Heart boxes full of candy are strewn, yes strewn about the shelves, the V-day cards are being picked over by so many people that I can't even reach my arm between them to pull one out of its slot. I'd have to close my eyes, thrust out my hand, and grab the first card I felt, not having a clue what it says.

Oy.

I was worried at first that all the boxed Valentines for the kiddos were gone. Since everything was in such a mess (not usually the case at my beloved Target, but tonight was an exception) we finally realized that all of the big pink boxes that were empty actually used to hold the boxes of character Valentines. Thank goodness I'm crazy tall and could reach up on the highest shelf to pull a box down that still contained 8 boxes of Transformer Valentine cards.

whew.

Needless to say, O was thrilled.

Probably not as thrilled as he would have been had we come across some Star Wars cards, but way more thrilled than if we'd been stuck with one of the boxes of generic animal cards we found after locating the Transformers.

After picking up a couple of cartons of V-day cookies and a bag of m&m's, we headed for home since it was already well past O's bedtime and oh, by the by- he still hadn't had supper.

(no awesome mom points for me today)

Here's O after signing his name to the cards

(and changing into some super-cool pjs)

Once he was all tucked in, I got to work on assembling his bags-

I found tons of free printables on Tip Junkie's site-

that's where the red/pink/white ones came from in the pic above.

I used my big circle punch and,

boom-

little tags to tie onto the outside of the bags.

and speaking of bags, I decided not to go with the bags I already had (in the pic) because you couldn't see the Transformer Valentines through them. I grabbed some ziplocks from the kitchen, cut the tops off, and that's what I went with-

One Transformer Valentine,

one tiny bag of m&m's,

one piece of chocolate from the bag the hubs gave me,

(don't worry, there's still enough left for me to gain 5 lbs easy)

and a free printable tag-

done.

Once those were packed up and ready,

I started on the kids (and the hubs) Valentines.

The sheet you see to the left in the pic below is another free printable I found on Tip Junkie.

I printed each of their names, cut them out leaving space underneath to fold so they'd stand up-

wrote each of them a sweet note on the back of the cards,

and put them on the kitchen counter for them to find in the morning.

and since it had been a while since I'd made an honest to goodness craft, I whipped one up.

Have you seen the tie t-shirts?

They're everywhere.

So cute- and since I'd purchased a plain back tee in O's size about 3 weeks ago at the hob lob, I had all the supplies I needed.

-plain black tee (2.99)

-piece of remnant fabric for tie (already owned)

I started by making a pattern for the tie.

Since I couldn't find a roll of craft paper (maybe I used it all and forgot?), I just used what I could find.

A Jason's Deli bag.

I started sketching my tie on the paper,

which was also on the t-shirt to help with proportion and whatnot.

cut out the pattern and tried it on for size-

pinned it to a piece of remnant fabric I already had on hand-

cut that out-

pinned it to the t-shirt, and sewed that baby down.

Thar she blows,

all done.

Won't he look like a stud in this at his V-day party?

(Here's hoping he actually wants to wear it, as I'm typing this after putting him to bed.)

I hope all of you are having a wonderful day-

the hubs is off (wa-hoo) so I'm looking forward to a lunch date in my classroom with food from the outside.

(always a treat for us teachers)

and since I know I'll hear it from my kids grandmothers if I don't post pics of all 3 of them,

here ya go Ma'am and MawMaw:

*****************************************************

update:

he totally wore his shirt to school-

he's also showing off new Star Wars guys and a funny flip thing that his hair can do.

Off to school!

**I linked this t-shrit tutorial to the Anything Goes party at Type A***

check out all of the other cool projects going on!