Valentine's Day 2023

Valentine’s Day arrived this year and my youngest son requested basketball-themed valentines for his school party. For the last few years we have strived to send non-food, non-candy, and allergen-free valentines for school parties, in support of my nephew who has a lot of food allergies, and this year was no exception.

I found these basketball pens on Amazon and they came in a pack of 24. Of course, we only needed 30, so I ordered two packs.

We headed to Pinterest for ideas for cute things to put on cards. And we’re suckers for a cute pun!

Next I made these simple basketball cards in Adobe Illustrator. The back just says “Love," and my kid’s name on the same basketball image. I printed them on my home printer onto card stock and cut them out with a 2.5 inch circle punch. The punch I have is Martha Stewart’s brand and it’s an awesome punch, but it’s been discontinues. Here is one from Fiskars that will work great. FYI, a 2.5 inch circle fits perfectly on a wide-mouth mason jar lid.

I attached each pen to a tag using some washi tape that I had to buy because I’m not a frequent user of washi tape. I found some food-themed tape on clearance at JoAnn’s.

In hindsight, I just should’ve used clear tape because at times the washi tape covered up some of the words.

Here’s a breakdown of the cost of this year’s valentines:

• basketball pens - $20.98/pack of 24

• washi tape - $5.99 for 8 rolls from JoAnn’s, on clearance

• card stock - already had

• printer - already had

At the end of the day, each valentine came to just under $1 each.

I have a love/hate relationship with printers. After owning and working with printers from Canon, Epson, Brother, Xerox, and HP, I always end up with HP because the print quality and color management has always proven to be closest to what I see on my calibrated monitor. Right now I have an HP Envy color inkjet printer. The print quality is okay, but nothing compared to a HP photo printer I had years ago (I STILL miss that printer). But ALL printers have their moments. Mine currently doesn’t want to connect to my desktop computer, it will only print from my phone. ::massive eye-roll:::

Here you can read about valentines I have created for previous years.

Does your family celebrate valentines day? If so, what traditions do you follow?

Valentine's Day 2022

Happy Valentine’s Day to those who celebrate! This is not a holiday we typically do anything for; feeling that’s it’s mostly driven by retail companies. That being said, creating fun valentines for school parties has become something I do look forward to each year.

This year my oldest son proclaimed “we don’t do valentines in middle school.” I rolled my eyes at him, but whatever.

At least my second grader still does valentines! We opted to go with non-food valentines again this year right when Sticker Mule was having a great sale on 3x3 inch holographic stickers. So he and I worked on a quick and fun design and I got them ordered. Have I mentioned that he loves bacon?

Next up was some kind of card to put the stickers on to give out at his party. We needed something for folks to know who these were from. I created a 4x5 inch card so I could print four on a page. I added a bacon border that matched the sticker and added his name. I had them printed and trimmed at my local Office Depot and they were ready within an hour.

I LOVE how these turned out! Here’s a breakdown of the pricing:

• 50 vinyl, holographic stickers, roughly 3x3 inch - on sale - $31.10 (incl tax, shipping was free)

• 12 pages printed on card stock (4 cards per page) and trimmed - $11.84

• double-sided tape (we already had some)

• Total: $42.94

That came out to $.89 cents per valentine for 48 valentines. There are only 25 kids in my son’s class, but he will also give one to his teacher, the class aides, specials teachers (music, PE, art, Spanish, etc), and the two administrative assistants. The minimum order for the deal on Sticker Mule was 50 stickers, so even if he only gave them out in his class, we’ll have leftover stickers to share with friends or I can list them in my sticker store for a few bucks.

Overall, this wasn’t crazy expensive and I love coming up with a fun way to do non-food, non-candy, allergen-free valentines.

Custom Valentines on Etsy

I have had so much fun creating valentines for my kids’ elementary school Valentine’s Day parties. Every year I expect them to ask for cartoon-branded, big box store valentines and every year they surprise me by wanting something custom-made by their mom.

I have made three of these valentines available for purchase in my Etsy shop. See below for instructions on how to order. This post contains a few affiliate links. Shopping through these links earns me a few cents and it’s greatly appreciated to keep my little business running.

Airplane-themed valentines! These are about 8x2.5 inches after they’ve been folded in half. They are designed to be stapled to snack-size baggies filled with valentine treats. You can consider sending non-candy, non-food, and allergen-free valentines to school and order foam airplane kits like pictured. You can order them from Amazon here. Just staple to the top of the poly bags. These were a HUGE hit in my kids’ classes last year. I add their salutation to the back written in “clouds”.

Link to this listing

Expo Marker Valentines! These were our valentines for 2021. We opted to go non-edible again and gave each classmate a dry erase marker; which was a hot commodity that school year. For their teachers, they got a Ziplock back with 6 Expo markers and 4 Sharpies. The cards are set up 4 to a page and there is enough space to adhere a thick or thin dry erase marker to the card with double-stick tape or washi tape. Choose from four different color schemes. You can buy dry erase markers from Amazon or your local Costco or Sam’s Club.

Link to this listing

Fishing Themed Valentines! These were so much fun to create. My boys love fishing; my oldest especially. So it was only fitting to opt for a fishing-themed valentine. These are approximately 8x2.5 inches when folded in half. I turn your child into a fishing cartoon and after these are trimmed and folded in half, they can easily be stapled to a snack-size Ziplock bag. You can go sandwich-size if you’d like. Fill these with Goldfish crackers, Swedish fish, or maybe gummy worms.

Link to this listing

When I create new valentines, I’ll try to add them to my shop if they’re worth it. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Valentine's Day 2021

We’re still dealing with a pandemic and I fully expected our kids’ teachers to send emails asking us not to send valentines to school next week. Our 1st grade teacher actually did, and then rescinded and laid out plans to have us send valentines to school ahead of time and kids will do lots of hand-washing before valentines are exchanged.

My 5th grader informed me that this will be his LAST year exchanging valentines at school because in 6th grade, middle schoolers don’t do valentines anymore (insert eyeroll).

Since we spent the first half of the school year attending school virtually, it became apparent how valuable dry erase makers are in our classrooms. Dry erase markers are used every day in both my kids’ classes to reduce the amount of paper used and hopefully reduce the number of high-touch spaces. Caps get lost and markers dry out, they are played with, and our teachers end up going through Expo markers like water.

We wanted to do another year of candy-free and non-edible valentines, so it was fitting for us to give Expo markers this year and we brainstormed a bunch of fun, punny sayings to put on them.

To save time, instead of drawing my kids’ faces, I created cartoons using a free Photoshop Action Set. The drawings we used on last year’s valentines are now more than two years old and my kids’ hairstyles have changed a lot, it was time for something new.

Expo markers came in packs of 18 at Sam’s Club, so I bought four packs and bagged up the extras into Ziplock bags for both teachers with their own cards.

Supplies & Cost Breakdown:

• 4 packs of 18 Expo Markers - $54.96 @ Sam’s Club. I think they were cheaper at Costco, but my local store was out.

• 1 roll double-sided tape (I considered picking up washi tape, but decided to save a few bucks)

• 15 sheets of card stock

• paper cutter

• computer and printer - I used the free Toon Artist Photoshop Action from Adobe to turn my kids into cartoons. Then I created the heart pattern, added text, and put it all together in Illustrator.

I already had all of the supplies listed except for the markers, so the cost came out to $.94 per valentine. It probably would’ve been cheaper if my Costco had these markers in stock, online lists them at 18 for $10.99. A pack of 36 markers is currently $21.27 on Amazon, or a box of 12 for $7.95, but I didn’t want to wait for shipping. I probably used a few bucks in printer ink, but I use HP’s Instant Ink program, so I have no idea how much that ended up being.

These were definitely more than I would have liked to spend on valentines, but they turned out cute and heck, next year we’ll only be making them for ONE class.

And in true reMARKably average parenting fashion, these were done a full week early because I got my weeks mixed up and thought their Valentine’s Day parties were THIS Thursday instead of next Thursday. In the end, I didn’t really need to save time and I could’ve ordered Expo markers from Amazon. I’m going to bed now.

Valentine's Day 2020

We don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. Both my husband and I think it’s a very commercial holiday; we didn’t even celebrate when we were dating. The fact that the anniversary of our first date is January 31st (22 years!) was enough for us to just skip Valentine’s Day all together.

Since my kids started school, we’ve done a smidge more, but still not THAT much. I do step up to reasonably-above-average in the parenting department and make custom valentines for their class parties. Every year I expect them to ask for boxed sets from the store and they continue to surprise me with wanting something fun and custom.

Last year I vowed to not send candy to school. This year I vowed to not send food at all. We scoured Pinterest for ideas and saw fun sayings to go with toy airplanes. A thorough Amazon search for inexpensive airplane gliders at different sizes, price points, and availability to get here within a few days (because you KNOW we didn’t start these until a few days before Valentine’s Day) and we found these great gliders! They came in clear poly bags (which I really liked) and had a bunch of different color combinations.

I took the same cartoon faces I made of my boys from last year and turned them into pilots and I LOVE how they turned out.

I don’t think I will be able to get away with these same cartoons next year. I’ll have to make new ones.

The card stock was printed with two per 8.5x11 page and then I trimmed them with a paper cutter and folded them in half. Two staples attached them to the clear poly bags.

We found a bunch of different sayings for these, and these three were the winners. I wanted to use “you’re so fly” but my kids had NO idea what that meant. I think I showed my age.

Price Breakdown:

Airplanes: Amazon, $16.99 for 36. I ordered two boxes total for my kids’ classes, so $36.44 including sales tax.
Printing: Office Depot, color printing onto #65 card stock, $17 including sales tax
Paper Cutter: already had one
Stapler & staples: already had those

Total: $53.44 which was just about $.74 cents per valentine. And since there are 26 kids in each of my kids’ classes, we had a few extras that we gave to teachers, neighbors, and a few non-school friends. This was definitely more than I wanted to spend, but my kids LOVE how they turned out and so do I. I may have to add these to my Etsy shop for next year!