valentine’s playdate and a suncatcher craft

“Whew, that was a long year.” *me, at the end of January.

Haha, have you guys seen that one going around? I guess in some ways it did feel slow. January happens to be one of my favorite months though, with its fresh promises and my birthday in tow. But honestly, I felt like January went by so fast! I somehow let the whole month pass me without posting once here on the blog. I set a goal for myself back when I first started blogging to post twice a week, so clearly that didn’t happen this month! One of my goals for this year is to create more value-added content here on the blog. But as it turns out, that is also some of the hardest content for me to create! Working with sponsors [which I am so fortunate and thankful to do!] often gives me the creative direction and a deadline that helps me get things done. So when I create for myself, I have a slower pace and can be more critical of myself. I have a lot of things floating around in my head to share on here, it’s just been a slow start to the new year.

Anyway, in an effort to bust out of this creative block I seem to be experiencing, I decided to share more of a fun little playdate we did over the weekend to celebrate love month, aka Valentine’s Day. The idea for this partially spawned from the gingerbread party playdate we did around Christmas time. Then, I was approached by Fry’s [a local grocery chain] to create something fun for Valentine’s Day with all the great stuff I could find at Fry’s. So I decided to do a little playdate with a few friends and create a Valentine’s Day craft all the kids could do!

For our craft, we had ages 1-5 years participating, so I did some prep work ahead of time. The project was to create a little heart shaped suncatcher, to hang in the window! Materials you need:

• poster board
• clear contact paper
• pink, red, and white tissue paper
• scissors
• hole punch
• string

I cut out the open heart shapes from posterboard the night before. Then I placed all of the hearts as closely together on the clear contact paper as possible, then replaced the backing to sandwich the posterboard in between the contact paper and backing. Then I cut the outline of the hearts again, so they were ready to go for the party.

Right before our guests arrived, I had my kids cut out little [about 1″] squares of the tissue paper with kid-safe scissors to make the little shapes for the suncatchers. Then, when everyone arrived, each kid could peel off the backing of the contact paper, and start placing the tissue paper in overlapping sections. I also had some fun puffy stickers that some kids used!

At the end, just punch a hole in the top, add a string or a ribbon, and hang from anywhere!

What fun Valentine’s Day traditions do you do with your kids? Here’s one we did a couple of years ago, that I may need to recreate this year again!