Valentine’s Day is such a fun holiday to celebrate! It is all about love, warm fuzzies, giving, and letting people know they are special. My kids are still pretty little, but I still wanted to let them in on this fabulous holiday. We organized a get together with moms and kids from church and from various other play dates and planned to exchange valentines.

Here are the boxes that we made! By we, I kind of mean me. Actually half way through the project, my husband came home and asked who was having more fun, me or the kids. Does it really matter? 😉

Gwenyth (18 months) is a huge fan of cats. She loves our cat, Toodles, and screams excitedly when she sees cats in books or anywhere else! We made her box by googleing a cat mask and cutting it out. If you are more confident in your drawing skills than I am, you could always make one of your own! We printed it out on cardstock so that it would have some structure to it. We made the tail by cutting out two of the same tail like shapes from white construction paper and gluing them together around a pipe cleaner. I was tempted to use the cardstock here as well, but it didn’t have as much strength as I was hoping when cut into that long, skinny shape. The legs are made out of toilet tissue rolls that are covered in white paper and the feet are just hearts cut from construction paper.  Pipe cleaners for the whiskers, googly eye stickers and a puff ball for the nose.  A little glitter glue, and our kitty was all ready to receive her valentines!

Max (3) has always loved basketball. Really any sport, but it is basketball season so we went with that. We covered the box in orange construction paper.  (I got the boxes at Target, but I am sure you could find an old shoe box that would work just as well!) We used a toilet tissue role for the base of the hoop, covering two sides in order to put is name on the box. The backboard is cardstock and the actual hoop is a pipe cleaner. Max wanted to add the ball and I thought that was a great idea! I drew basketball lines on the orange paper (after the kids went down for naps, I had a nagging feeling that Max’s box didn’t really look finished, so I actually extended the lines down the sides of the box as well.) Some glitter glue basketball words on the sides and it was a “slam dunk.” 😉