happy heart decorating

Valentine's Day is almost here!

You better believe that our house has been heart-happy and all fancied-up in pink and red since last weekend. I've always loved decorating for the holidays, and why not? Any reason to celebrate, right?

This is a craft that we made last year but just brought out for our windows again this year: Beautiful Valentine's Day Hearts.

They're so easy to make, and the simple cutting of tissue paper, extra plastic goodie bags, and streamers actually might even count as a little fine-motor skill tuning for our little ones!

(fyi: This is basically a re-post from last year, but I thought it was worth sharing! )

• Valentine's Day Hearts: I picked up some contact paper this week, and here's what we did: I taught Maddy and Owen how to make a heart by folding construction paper in half (how fun!), and they cut the hearts I traced.

These beautiful hearts make me smile every time I see them.

Then we cut red, white, and pink tissue paper, leftover plastic goodie bags, and silver sparkles up into tiny pieces. We put the heart on the sticky side of contact paper, then carefully placed the tiny pieces of pretty paper in the center.

When we were finished, we put another piece of contact paper over the whole thing and cut around the edges.

We put them on the windows, and they looked awesome, especially against the falling snow. Cora loved picking out which tissue paper she wanted in the center of her hearts, and it was a great activity for scissor practice for Maddy and Owen. All preschoolers need scissor practice. . .

Thanks to the cool ladies in my MOMS group for sharing the idea with me when we decorated NIH last year. It's a super-easy activity, and it doesn't take too much time at all. And the holiday possibilities are endless: shamrocks, eggs, pumpkins, fall leaves. . . fun!

This year's Valentine's Day craft totally rocks; we've been working on it for the last two days, and it's really cool. Hopefully I'll get around to sharing it this weekend--