A Pocket Full of Love Valentine's Day Cards

Less than one week. That's how much time women across America have to prepare for the beast that is commercialized Valentine's Day. I'm not trying to be cynical here, it's just Valentine's Day is a lot like Prom... typically disappointing. Weather for you it's Single's Awareness Day (SAD) or Forced Affection Day (FAD?) both scenarios end with lost hopes when a magical moment doesn't manifest itself.

I prefer the Valentine's celebrations I remember from grade school, before the hype of love requiring a significant other. I loved carefully making cards and taping candy to each envelope. I loved dropping those cards in the delicately decorated shoeboxes that my classmates worked so hard on. I loved getting to wear a red and white outfit to school instead of my uniform. I loved going home with my personal shoebox full of candy and cards. I loved it all.

Perhaps that's why I still love making Valentine's cards. Who can be sad cutting out hearts and thinking of the people you hold most dear that you will send them to? Not me... even when my son ends up sticking car stickers all over his hearts while my daughter argues that cars are "not for Valentine's Day". And that was my morning today making "a pocket full of love" cards for our favorite people.

To start I decorated two pieces of red paper cut out in the shape of a pocket like so...

Then I glued them back to back. Just don't forget to leave an opening for the top.

My kids decorated a heart for each person in the family we are sending a pocket.

The purple one's are Bean's. Somehow cars are not Valentine's material, but dinosaurs are.

Then we stuffed our pockets, you know so they would be full of love...

and we'll ship them out sometime this week!

I wish I could take credit for the cute poem we put on the back, but it come from Paper Dali, whose blog is SO worth checking out for amazing printable coloring pages of saints and historical figures.

Also, for a wealth of ideas for all things St. Valentine's day head over to Catholic Icing, where I'm going to add this post to the St. Valentine's Day link up!