Here is a great tutorial on how to make a love letter garland or count down bunting for Valentine’s Day! This fabulous paper craft with love messages is from Kendra and it’s a great Valentine activity for kids.
How to Make
Young children have a hard time understanding time. My 3 year old has a hard time understanding why everyone else has to have a birthday before she can have another one. It’s always helpful to have a way to physically mark the time leading up to an anticipated event. But as with my Christmas advent calendar, I don’t believe that my children need candy and presents daily in order to do it. I decided to come up with a Valentine’s countdown or advent calendar that might help them remember to be more loving during the first 14 days of February. It also serves as a cute decoration for my mantle!
I started with these inexpensive heart doilies I found on clearance at Target after Valentines last year.
My 9 year old helped me stitch up the bottoms of two hearts put together. We used thick embroidery floss and a large needle, to stitch through the existing holes in the hearts, securing the thread on the backside with large knots. This makes little pocket.
Then I simply used hot glue to attach the heart pockets to a wide pink taffeta-textured ribbon. The numbers were cut out of vinyl by my new Silhouette (my Christmas present from BSB–my husband)!
I overlapped the edges a bit while gluing so the garland wasn’t too enormous for my mantle.
I then wrote and designed heart-shaped inserts to go in each day. The inserts have a rhyme with a LOVE-themed challenge for the day. Hopefully, as a family we will take that challenge and perform that task during that day. Here’s a few examples:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
On the 1st day of Valentines
Tell someone special, “I love you!”
On the 4th day of Valentines
Write a LOVE letter
And give it to someone special
To help them feel better
Love they neighbor!
Think of someone on your street
On the 7th day of Valentines
Take them a special treat.
I’m including my inserts here. Click on them to see them full-sized. Print them out on 8 1/2 x 11 cardstock and cut them out. You can insert them in your own garland, or maybe just hide one each day for the kids to find each morning of the countdown.
And here is my garland as part of my Victorian Valentine’s Day mantle.
Lots of love to Laurie for giving me the opportunity to guest post on her amazing website and to all of you! I hope your Valentine’s Day is sweet!
***
My name is Kendra and I have been told repeatedly by many people close to me that I am, in fact, insane. I get a little carried away dreaming up parties, decorations for my home, and projects for holidays and every day. My motto is…
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have been blogging about my crazy ideas for more than 3 years now, so if you are looking for ideas for an event or holiday, there is a good chance I’ve blogged about it. I’d love to have you come and experience MY INSANITY!
This is such a cute idea. I have been searching for this after seeing it very quickly the other day. I’m definitely doing something inspired by this for my kiddies! Thank you!!