S.W.A.K.

We had lots of valentine activities during the week all gearing up to a quiet Valentine's Day spent with the ones we love.



The kids easily made over 100 Valentine's. The three older kids needed very little help from Mom this year - I just provided all the supplies, lots of heart cut outs, glue sticks, special valentine pencils and tape. Thanks to my stock pile of scrapbook paper, various heart punches, and my circut (GR's Valentine gift to me last year - purchased just for projects like this) my involvement this year in this part of the process was less hands on than it's been in the past. It's always fun to see how each child chooses to use the exact same supplies, they all turned out a little differently and were all charming.



For Alex's playgroup valentines, I used the "My Funny Valentine" clipart again for the 3rd year in a row - this has honestly been the best $5 I've spent on clipart. Alex and Anna had a great time at the Valentine party at playgroup. We got to visit with friends, pass our valentines, eat sugar cookies, play with playdough and decorate a Valentine bag. Having a bag of Valentine's for Alex was so helpful Friday after school when all the big kids came home with thier bags and buckets of valentines. Alex was able to join in the fun of dumping out his Valentines and reading through them just like the big kids. And he had just enough little treats included with his cards that it kept him happy and out of the big kids candy too!





GR and the kids helped me cut out sugar cookies for a cookie decorating playdate we had after school Wednesday. One of our playmates has a sensitivity to red dye #40. I wanted him to have the option of decorating cookies with something other than white frosting and white sprinkles, so I went on a hunt for a natural red food dye and decorations. I called my local natural food store - they no longer carry a natural red food dye, and most of what I saw commercially online wouldn't get here in time and was a little expensive for an occasional batch of frosting. The discontinued dye came from beets, and the dye free/vegan blogs I found, used raspberries to tint frosting pink. So after consulting these resources, and making a phone call to Sandy Gluck of Everyday Food, I decided to give both raspberries and beets a try. I ended up using ~1-1/2 tablespoons of raspberry puree (made by pushing frozen raspberries through a sieve) and a teaspoon or so of beet juice from a can of beets. The result was beautiful and scrumptious. I've run into red dye issues before, and I'm so glad I now have an alternative that I can easily use in the future.



There is nothing quite like the thrill of getting a piece of real mail delivered to you, expectedly or unexpectedly. Maybe that's why it's always been important to me that our kids send valentines to the special people in our lives. We don't always get them sent to the same people each year, and we've been known to send digital valentines, but I'm hopeful that it's teaching them an important lesson about letting the special people in our lives know how important they are to us.

We hope your Valentine's Day was special and that you were surrounded by reminders of how much you are loved and appreciated! We celebrated with lunch out with Grandma and Grandpa - Rebecca requested Mexican so we abliged, GR bought new appliances we had scouted out the night before on our "date", and had heart shaped pancakes for dinner, complete with red sprinkles, whipped cream and strawberries.


(Alex and Anna at the playgroup party Thursday.)