Heart Attack!!! - the good kind
Our group of friends has an informal tradition of doing silly pranks from time to time. We've filled a car with helium balloons and put forks with peeps on them in someone else's yard. Our house was egged last year at Easter - plastic eggs all over the yard!

While reading some of the blogs I frequent, I came across the heart attack idea on Kids Activity Idea Box I knew it was the perfect family thing to do on Valentine's Day!
I called up my friend J and together we worked out a rough plan. We got the families together (6 kids in all!) to cut hearts, make signs and string the cut out hearts onto yarn to make streamers.



J had the great idea to create a heart garland out of a pink plastic table cloth she had in her basement taking up space.


After taking a break for a nice heart shaped pizza dinner from Papa Johns, we headed out to decorate 2 friends' homes. It was quite dark (after the kids bedtimes - oops!) but the kids wrote "you've had a heart attack" and drew hearts on the driveways with chalk while two adults hung the hearts, garland and streamers. It turned out a bit hodge-podgy - remember it was really dark - but I think our friends will enjoy the sentiment when they discover their new decorations!
Here's house #1 - front door...



and garage...

and house #2 - front door...

and the garage!

(updated to add: Thanks Greg for the pictures of your house! Apparently Boo wrote, "You've had a heart attack! Are you feeling ok?" on the driveway at house #2. Funny!)

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Easy Valentines
What with vacation and illnesses, Valentine's Day has snuck up on us! We needed some easy and quick Valentine ideas. Enter Family Fun magazine. We were able to use two of the ideas from the February issue.

First up, preschool Valentines for Bug's class. To make these you need Teddy Grahams, Gummi Bears, small plastic bags (we used snack sized), cardstock and staples.

Fill each baggie with a small handful of Teddy Grahams and a few Gummi Bears. Use a word processing program to fashion some simple cards. We used the phrase "A Big Bear Hug" and some clip art from Microsoft. I printed the cards on white cardstock, cut them out and stapled them to the bags. Easy Peasy!




Boo's school does not allow candy or food to be passed out with Valentines. Therefore, we are one of the probably 26 families who will be passing out pencil cards this year. For this we used a box of 30 pencils, cardstock, a hole punch and a class list.
Again we used a word processing program and various heart images to create tags. Boo added her name and her friends names to the tags. Then we punched a hole in each end of the tag and pushed the pencil through. Ta-da!
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Autographs
Over the years I've made several autograph books for the girls.
First there was Boo's Princess Book made out of several lunch-sized paper bags (the paper clips on the side are attached to cards that the characters signed):



Bug's Book was Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse themed made the same way:

Then came the book for Sesame Place last summer, made from a 7 Gypsies board book:



For our Disney trip this year, I decided we had enough little books lining the shelves. I debated several ideas, finally settling on the one suggested by my friend Jenni - pillowcases.

Using my Craft Robo, a Disney-esque font, some contact paper and fabric paint, I put the words "Disney Dreaming" on the wide edge.

Several people (including cast members!) asked me where I bought the cool pillowcases.


Then I had the kids put their own autograph and year on the other wide edge. We had the characters sign with Crayola brand fabric markers. We tried to make the fabric taut using cardboard and rubberbands, then cardboard and knots. Finally we settled on cardboard and chip clips!

Here's [one of] the final product[s].

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