Valentine Flowers

Our school cancelled for the day yesterday and again for today. We've done cleaning, baking, laundry, a lot of TV and a lot of playing. The natives were beginning to get restless by mid-morning, so I went back to the Family Fun website and let them chose another craft that I already had supplies for.

Valentine Flowers! Start with stacks of whatever colored paper you have on hand. Luke's mom had given us a batch of paper for the kids, and I pulled out my printed scrapbook paper and gave the kids all the scraps to choose from.

We cut the printed paper into strips. I have a child-safe paper cutter, so I gave this project to the kids. They were in "happy paper cutting land" for a good 20 minutes.
This time it was Nater Mater who thought it would be grand to blow all the scraps across the table and onto the floor with Good Lookin' cheering him on. It took just about as much time to clean it all up and back into a pile on the table for us to use.

Then came the bag of 300 Dum Dum lollipops that I've had since Nater's second birthday. (If I knew how to link within my own blog, I'd let you just click and see what I did with the Dum Dum's initially. You'll have to fine Nathaniel's 2nd birthday post).

I've gotten tired of this bag and wanted to get rid of them. Viola! Flower Centers!

Naters really likes lollipops. "lolpop anyone? No? I'll eat 4 when mom isn't looking." Oh well, on snow days where it is in the negative digits and they cry when they step outside, what is a few "lolpops?" Just don't tell our dentist.

Next we cut out the hearts. Only Precious Jewel and I had the skills for this part of the project, so she and I kept pretty busy and even she lost interest after about 1/2 a dozen. I did the rest.

We cut a little notch in the hearts.

Thread the strips onto the stick. (The kiddos could do this part mostly themselves). The younger 2 boys needed more help. Heck, Nater just ate the "pops;" there was no threading involved for him.

Why are there no pics of the mysterious 2 middle boys? Because they honestly were more interested in cutting up strips of paper to use as sword and kept jumping down from the table to fight each other. My camera isn't so good at action shots.

Here's your cute little flower center with just 3 strips of scratch paper!

Then on go the notched hearts and the flower petals.

(A whole lot of tape is used on the bottom to hold the whole thing together by the way).

And here are the cutest ever use for the ridiculously giant bag of Dum Dums!

Our little Valentine's Garden!