Happy Ballinstine Day!

Addie, usually an excellent linguist, gets her "Vs" and her "B" mixed up. At school she has a cuvvy and her favorite TV show is Max and Roovy. In anticipation of Ballinstine Day, we got a little crafty. Using crayon shavings, wax paper, an iron and heart shaped cookie cutters, we adorned this Valentine tree. These branches have been handy for all holidays. You might remember when it first appeared as an Easter egg tree, for Halloween it hung ghosts and at Christmas paper chains. When we aren't celebrating a holiday, I hang bird cut-outs that I made out of cereal box cardboard covered in a pretty wrapping paper.



We also made Valentine's for the grandparents using potato stamps. I learned the hard way not to expect to get red stamp pads the weekend before Valentine's day. Instead, we made do with pink and silver - a little too 80s I think. They didn't come out quite as I had envisioned, but it was the process that counts, not the product (oh Maria Montessori would be so proud). I thought I'd have plenty of time to get Addie to write her name in the cards, but on Monday evening I realized she was expected to bring 24 handmade Valentines for her classmates on Thursday. Thank goodness I went a little craft supply crazy at Michael's and had bought a paper trimmer. I set out cutting up cardstock I happened to have already into 3 x 3 folding cards. I resurrected the potato stamps and the left over wax crayon hearts from the trash and set Addie to work gluing, stamping and signing for 3 nights in a row. It was like a Valentine sweat shop. I think the mini cards turned out rather sweet.

Tonight my sister arrives from snowpocolypse, and I'm so excited! We'll have to do something sunny and warm with her.