In general, I can’t say that Valentine’s Day is a big deal at our house. Between deployments, rough pregnancies, and crazy work schedules, my husband and I don’t have any extra special memories of February 14.
That said, I absolutely LOVED the holiday as a kid. The cards, candy, and festive break from the daily grind of school classwork was, of course, quite spectacular. We always made our own Valentine boxes and my favorite part was walking around to all my classmates and delivering cards like a mail carrier.
Admit it. You liked that part too.
So when my daughter pointed out that we have absolutely NO decorations for the holiday next week, I zipped over Pinterest to find a project for the kids. And this was such a winner! It is for cards and notes, but WAY easier to decorate than a shoebox covered in construction paper. We had a BLAST with this project and the kids already asked to do it next year! You can make it with items already in your house and it doesn’t take a lot of time or adult supervision. Scroll down to see just how easy it was!
Paper Plate Card Holder for Valentine’s Day
Supplies:
cheap paper plates, 2 for every person
stapler
ribbon
crayons, markers, stickers, and other decor
Instructions:
Fold each paper plate in half. Tuck the plates inside each other, straight edges out, to make a heart. Staple where the plates cross at the bottom point, and the center of each side of the heart, as shown below.
Next, poke holes in the two sides, and thread ribbon or string, making a long look to hang the heart from. You can do this however you want! Some of our kids wanted long ribbon, and some wanted it super short. Whatever sounds good to you!
Now its time to decorate!
Paint makes the paper plate kinda soggy and it takes forever to dry so stick to crayons or washable markers. Stickers were fun and since I had collected a lot of miscellaneous crafty things over the years, I had quite a deep pool to grab from. When stuff goes on clearance I like to stock up. Even if you didn’t have any, this was very fun to just color, so don’t feel like you need to make a separate trip just to get some sparkly sticker bling! 🙂
My oldest decided to go one further and attached a little ribbon tail to the bottom of her heart. Super cute.
If you have the time (or the patience) you can cut out your own paper hearts to tuck in as valentines! My kids couldn’t wait until the 14th, so they hung their hearts on the door knobs of their bedrooms and have been stuffing messages in ever since. Originally, I had planned to hang them from the back of their chairs at the dinner table, and when they came down for breakfast on Valentine’s Day, each would have a little card and some chocolate from mom and dad. We will see if that works out!! 🙂
