valentine for my valentine

it's been a full week o' love. hope you're feeling it too. i ripped off an idea from something i saw on fab.com a few weeks ago and crafted cricket a little valentine.

we like to keep it simple around valentine's. here's a version of the convo we had leading up to the hallmark holiday:
C: "we aren't doing gifts, right?"
Me: "i guess that depends on how much you love me"
C: "oh come on."
Me: "i got you something."
C: "huh? i thought we weren't doing gifts. i thought we were saving money" [panic sets in]
Me:  "well, i made you something."
C: "oh."
Me: "are you counting flowers as a gift? cuz i expect some pretty flowers."
C: rolling the eyes

here's what i made him using a simple word processor, nifty font, and card stock:

popped it in a little frame and it's perfect for his desk:

i topped it off with an "i love you" balloon from the grocery store. high roller!

happy valentine's day. i couldn't post this before the big day in fear of ruining the surprise.

magic reindeer food

when i was little, one of our holiday highlights was putting out the reindeer food on Christmas Eve. every year, Mrs. Gidley would deliver the magic mix to our porch, and we 3 girls were delighted to get to sprinkle it on the lawn. part of this excitement may have stemmed that this brown paper bag had likely been touched by Mrs. Gidley's son, who was SOOOOOOOO cute. cute boy aside, the reindeer food was always a favorite thing.

after we'd open our Christmas PJs on Christmas Eve, we'd put on our slippers, bundle up, and sprinkle the mix on the front yard to make sure Santa's reindeer had a snack while he was so busy unloading our loot. then, we'd argue over who got to color which part of the reindeer.



Mrs. Gidley's mixture consisted of hay and glitter packaged in a brown paper sack, and it always had a hand-drawn reindeer picture for coloring. apparently, glitter isn't bio-degradable, so i had to adjust the mix to be environmentally friendly and all. but the packaging stayed the same.

Ingredients:
Oats - duh, reindeer LOVE oats
Colored sugar - creates the "magic" sparkle to help the reindeer find your house
Cypress fronds - gives it a Christmas-y smell to help the reindeer know it's safe to eat

Instructions:
Evenly disperse the oats among the dozen or so bags (about 1/3 cup each). Sprinkle sugar crystals into each bag. Top off with some cypress fronds (I salvaged mine from the porch where my garland was shedding). Give it a shake.

Fold over the top of each bag + staple the coloring label onto the front. I stamped each one with our name so folks knew where they came from, too.

You can download my coloring labels here. 2 will print per page, and they fit perfectly onto the average brown paper lunch sack. If you're distributing to a household with siblings, you may want to tack on enough coloring labels for each child to avoid a small war.

The label's poem reads:

Sprinkle on your lawn at night

Rudolph's nose will make it sparkle bright.

As Santa's reindeer fly and roam,

This will guide them to your home.

Drop them off to your friends + neighbors with school-age kiddos the week before Christmas.