A Valentine Collection Box and some Valentines. Totally last minute!

Q's class is celebrating Valentine's Day tomorrow.  His teacher is brilliant.  She decided if they did it mid-week the kids wouldn't be totally annoying the WHOLE week.  I like the way this woman thinks.  Needless to say we've been procrastinating on Q's Valentines.  Do we go with a Mario theme?  Different cards for the girls?  Lovey-dovey vs. Masculine?  Sooooo many decisions.

Here's what we came up with.  First stop the collection box.

After I cleared off the kitchen table from our breakfast.  Just kidding, this is not what we ate for breakfast.  This is the garbage  recycled materials, we used for his collection box.  I cut open the Doritos bag and cleaned the remaining cheese residue off, leaving a lovey, shiny and very workable material.  Q wanted to use aluminum foil but we are on a budget!

Turns out the Doritos bag works better than foil because it doesn't wrinkle like foil.  A much cleaner look.  We wrapped the Sprite box with the Doritos bag using shipping tape.

And boy howdy, look how slick it is!  Next we added some construction paper and pipe cleaner decorations.  And some calendar pieces Mr. Handsome was throwing away recycling.

Doesn't it rock!?  We are very proud of this little masterpiece.  Easy, didn't cost a cent to make and will hold TONS of Valentines.  Now on to the Valentines.  While wasting time doing research on the Internet I came across this brilliant idea by Alyssa.  I couldn't resist so we went for it.

First you take a picture of your Valentine subject, here sporting the always popular Randy Moss/Mario look. Have your subject hold his/her fist out in front of their body.

If you have Photoshop (I do not) you can add some words onto the picture.  I instead copied the picture into a Word document and added the Valentine message.  I wanted to have it read "You are what you eat!"  note the Dum Dums also in the picture but that was vetoed.  Print out the pictures with message and cut to the desired size.

With an Exacto knife, cut a small slit at the top and bottom of child's hand and slide a lollipop through the slit.  Isn't it cool?  Totally looks like his hand is coming off the page.  It's easy and does not take a lot of craft supplies or talent.

You should totally make these today.