Quick Valentines

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Okay, I have to admit...Valentine's Day has not been high on my priority list lately.  There's been a lot going on in our little house, and I had not really planned on making any little treats for my daughters' classes.  The only plan I had consisted of buying some of those cute pre-made Valentines and stapling them to 1" x 8" cellophane bags I've had for a while (filled with some sort of candy, of course).  So, that was my plan for spending only a short amount of time on goodies for my girls' classes.  Well, living in Germany seems to mess up my plans a lot.

Here's what you have to understand about Germany.  Number one...people here speak German.  Duh.  ;)  So, even if they do celebrate Valentine's Day, and even if they do have little packages of V-day cards (which, by the way, I don't know if they do)...they would be in GERMAN, not English.  Number two, Germany does not really do scrapbooking, it seems.  There are very few craft stores around here, and they are not geared toward paper crafts.  So, here's my problem: anything I buy that has to do with the "American" way of celebrating a holiday or that has to do with crafts has to be bought on base...at the Base Exchange or the very small Arts and Crafts hobby store we have.  Now, usually, this isn't a problem.  The Base Exchange (BX) is usually very good about getting at least SOMETHING I can use in on time.  In fact, there have been boxes of chocolates and little V-day stuffed animals out since early January.  However, no matter how many times a week I searched, they had not gotten in any of those cute little boxes of Valentines.  The nice lady I talked to said the shipment hadn't come in yet...as of Friday...just a few days before the big day.  Uggghhhh!!! So, my plans were messed up, yet again, by our wonderful BX.  You'd think I'd have learned over the past 2 years to plan ahead and order these things through the Internet.  Nope...not me.

So, I started panicking a little on Sunday.  What were we going to do?  I still didn't know how I was going to fit in paper piecing 48 little Valentines, and I've never tried the print and cut function on my Cameo, and I didn't think this was a good time to try it out.  I tend to get more frustrated when I'm panicking.  Well, I have to say that Lettering Delights (one of my favoritest stores ever) saved me.  I saw that they were offering free printable V-day cards in different patterns.  They had pirate ones, alligator ones, buggy ones, and monkey ones.  So, the girls and I took a look, and they settled on the cute Bugaboo ones.  All I had to do was print them on white card stock and cut them with my awesome Carl paper trimmer (which can cut up to 4 sheets of heavy card stock at a time).  It still took quite a bit of time to stuff the little bags (which I bought at Clear Bags a while back) with Skittles, but I think the result turned out to be pretty fun and cute.  (By the way, I had envisioned filling them with V-day colored candies, like pink and red M & Ms...but, guess what?  The BX didn't carry those this year.  Go figure!)  Ha!!!

So, here's an example of the 50 or so Valentines my daughters and I put together yesterday:

Pretty simple...but it was all I had time for this year.  I still think they are super cute! :)

We used pink wrapping paper, some pre-cut letters I had laying around from my pre-Cricut days, and the little bugs from some extra cards I printed to decorate their Valentine's Day boxes.  Using my Xyron sticker machine made this go even faster for us. :)  Here are their finished boxes:

Well, I hope you like our quick and easy Valentines.  I'll have some other Valentine's Day cards that I made for my family to share with you throughout the week.  Have a wonderful Monday, everyone!