On Wednesday, I picked Hallie up from school and found a “Valentine List” in her folder.  It was a note with cute red hearts on it that provided the names of the 10 toddlers in her class in case we choose to bring in Valentines.  Super helpful as there are one or two part-time munchkins that I never see.  Wait…VALENTINES??? CRAP! I had already been to Target and it did not even cross my mind.  Oops.  The teacher was really sweet and told me not to worry about it.  Ha!

As soon as we were in the car, I called Michael and asked him to stop at Walmart on his way home and buy some Goldfish snack packs.  I figured there had to be something cute on Pinterest with Goldfish.  Of course, I wasn’t disappointed.  There were about eleventy billion options.  Once I picked one, I realized I also needed something for the teachers.  I quickly texted Michael who had already checked out but was nice enough to go back into the hell of Walmart for a few more items.  Yay!  He was thrilled to do it, especially when it took about 30 minutes for him to find a Walmart employee that not only knew what Mason Jars were but could actually tell him if they sold them and where to find them.  To be honest, I feel like he should have known that when he walked into Walmart at 5:30pm the night before a snow storm and immediately found the one item he needed and then proceeded to find no line at the checkout, it was too good to be true.  Right?

I love Pinterest.  It’s so much fun finding and pinning great new recipes that I’m never going to make because I cannot cook, dream homes that I’m never going to live in because I’m not rich, clothes I’m never going to wear because I’m not tall and skinny, pillows and curtains I’m never going to make because I can’t sew, DIY cleaning solutions I’m never going to concoct because I never clean… etc.  My general opinion about Pinterest is I LOVE IT BUT AINT NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT.

But, occasionally my inner Martha Stewart claws her way out and we have a lot of fun together. In the case of these Valentines, they were pretty simple and had I done the entire thing start to finish in one sitting it probably would have taken about an hour.

Let’s start with the Teacher Valentines.  My inspiration came via Kimberly at A Night Owl.  I (Michael) got two small mason jars at Walmart for about $2.00 each.  I used a bag of Goldfish Vanilla Cupcake Grahams, half a bag of Valentine M&M’s and half a bag of mini marshmallows and mixed them all in a bowl.

I decided to use a different saying than what Kimberly used and placed it onto a heart graphic that I already had, then printed them, cut them out, punched holes and attached them to the jars with ribbon.  I already had the white card stock, a hole puncher and ribbon.  Of course, my cards were way too big and I ran out of red ribbon.  Oh well.  Here is the finished product…

I had a little extra mix so I tried some.  Those Goldfish grahams sure are yummy!

Now, for the Kiddos.  I have to admit that I love these.  And I pretty much copied them exactly from Pinterest, with the exception of some color and font choices.  I’d love to link to the original owner, however, the pin doesn’t lead anywhere.  If these were yours, please let me know and I’ll give you the credit you deserve.

These were even more simple than the teacher valentines.  I (Michael) bought a box of Goldfish snack packs (there were 12 in a box) from Walmart.  I already had the white card stock, a hole puncher and ribbon.  I traced the original image in Adobe Illustrator, added the kids names and Hallie’s name, then copied and pasted until I had 9.  Then I printed.  Again, the cards were a little big for the goldfish bags and I had to use orange ribbon since I ran out of the red.  But, who cares… they are cute, right?

And here is my little love bug before school this morning…