[cybele727]

So St. Valentine’s Day is approaching. I hate candy. Well no, I LOVE candy, but… You get it… 🙂

So I want to make the hair bow ties for the girls in my son’s class, but what do I make the boys of equivalent cost/value/ ease/ coolness factor??? Don’t think the heart pattern will cut it! I don’t want to embarrass my son with a totally uncool mommy! Lol

Desperately needing suggestions.

[meleliza]

Try Pinterest. LOTS of crafty ideas there. P and I are packaging up clementines and attaching tags that read “orange you glad were friends?” 1st graders LOVE corny jokes like that. Found it on Pinterest, so don’t give me the credit. There was one idea that involved army guys, but I can’t remember the joke.

[scgoble]

I saw a cool idea just today to make bookmarks. You can forgo the hearts and like Meleliza said, just put the corny saying on there:

http://inchmark.squarespace.com/inchmark/2013/2/6/valentine-bookmarks.html

[cybele727]

First, I just discovered you *could* search Pinterest. OMG… even bigger time suck! 🙂

Now, I love this book mark idea, b/c honestly, I just, just, just bought some supplies to make bookmarks.

Corny sayings here I come!

[Sarvi]

I think it was momtojack who made these little heart-shaped multicolored crayons — melting down bits of old broken ones in a mold. I remembered because I just saw the ice cube tray/molds at Target in the dollar bin the other day. Looked fun!

http://www.squidoo.com/melted-crayon-craft-projects

[meleliza]

Oh yes, we did the crayons last year, lots of fun, huge time suck. And nothing absolutely nothing beats Pinterest for a time drain.

[cybele727]

Thanks ladies! I made the bookmarks and heart crayons! I will make the hair bow for his teacher!!

[Robin]

We made play dough coloured with Kool Aid and cut it into heart shapes. You can put sparkles in it too. We put it in a plastic bag and attached a note. It was popular with everyone and didn’t take us too long to do.

[Jennifer1568]

We made crayons melted into a heart shape last year. It was a fun project. I love the clementine idea. I want to do that next year. This year my daughter made monsters out of heart shapes and wrote Monster Love on them. http://captaincrafty.com/2012/02/make-monster-valentines/ We attached them to a small heart sucker. I also think these mustaches are cute. http://www.firsthomelovelife.com/2013/01/mustache-valentines.html

[cybele727]

I made the bookmarks but used each child’s favorite color for the card stock as I happen to have a multi colored package laying around. And then I stamped their name on the front of the book mark. I also made the crayons which my WeeGee keeps trying to take from me and play with. 🙂

I am grateful for all the suggestions and inspired by everyone’s creativity!

[needlewoman]

For next year’s Valentine Day, what about bow ties for the boys. Sewn on elastic, they can look very cute.

[needlewoman]

PS: although, Valentine’s Day has become bigger and bigger in Australia in the last 10 years, it’s for adults only. I remember reading about school children exchanging valentine favours in books I read when I was young, and thought it sounded lovely. (I don’t think I really understood that they were American children/stories, back then). So really curious to know what a clementine is?

[cybele727]

I thought of that. *I* would love that but I don’t want to turn my son into the class loser b/c mom is so uncool!

Looking at the socio-economic composition of my son’s class, he’d likely get mocked to death.

Last year in school he was told that shirts with buttons are for rich people, and dress socks are for church. He was embarrassed. He’s so sensitive, I just can’t be the uncool mom over something trivial, like Valentines.

[Sarvi]

Wow, buttons are for rich people. Funny, I think we mentioned it here before, but I remember growing up thinking that stairs were for rich people!

Clementines (around here, at least) are a small citrus fruit — like a tangerine, perhaps? They’re also a brand of very nice finger paints, incidentally.

[needlewoman]

Sounds like a mandarin; explains all the references to ‘orange’. I love them myself, and really look forward to being able to buy them from about July (mid winter, here). Thanks for that Sarvi. Cybele, the agony of worrying that your child’s “cred” might be savaged by your well-meaning efforts; I feel for you, seriously. I can certainly see that bow ties would NOT be acceptable to little boys who think buttons are “posh”. I think I may cry. So easy to forget when participating in this forum that so many other people/children may never have any smart/pretty clothes made for them, buttoned or not.