Candy-Free Valentine's Gifts for Kids

Valentine's Day never meant anything to me growing up. News reporters would comment on the number of roses sold and they might feature a few love stories with people getting engaged or an elderly couple talking about their secret to marriage. A few teachers at school might be sent flowers from their husbands, but it meant nothing to the kids. I didn't really have a problem with it.

Last year was my first Valentine's Day with Canadian children and it was a bit of a culture shock. First of all, it's commercial. There are cartoon Valentine's kits of every sort - Cars, Princesses, Toy Story. All you have to do is write your child's name on each pre-written card. And secondly, everyone participates. The kids had LOADS of candy. It was a tad overwhelming and I felt under prepared.

But not this year!!!

Thanks to this blog, I was able to create something cute to give to my kids that DIDN'T involve candy.

I purchased a 64 pack of Crayola crayons (about $7) and I already had the cello bags. I then used Photoshop to create the little bag tops.

It would have been lovely to just print the free ones from the blog, but seeing as our printer is running low on Cyan ink, I re-did it all with pink stripes instead and used a free rainbow graphic I found online.

Seeing as I was doing it all by scratch anyway, I printed the kids names on each one.

 So there you have it. Candy-free Valentine's gifts for 18 children DONE.