Valentines 2012: Love those free printables!

This year for Valentine's Day, the kiddos decided to do something a little different. In the past they've always made molded chocolates (or crayons!) for their friends. This year, we went in search of free printables on the Web.

Mugger decided to give his classmates pencils after we saw this great download at Sweet Muffin Suite. Arrows are sufficiently boyish enough for valentines, don't you think?
Bug decided to use 2 ideas we found on the web. First, she wanted to use this awfully cute valentine download from Secret Agent Josephine that I've had bookmarked for 3 years now. But then when she saw this sticker matchbook valentine idea on Alpha Mom, we knew we had to combine the two:
There were even enough designs that every classmate got a different valentine:
Then it was my turn to use free printables for valentines. Back at Christmas, I had saved this idea from Let's Explore for a Year of Dates with your child. Her printables were great, but not for me since the kiddos call us Mama and Papa, not Mom and Dad. When I saw this download at Life As Mom for free printable valentine coupons, I knew I was set.
We wanted to give the kiddos each 3 dates with Papa and 3 dates with Mama. Our outings will be:

• a breakfast out with Papa
• a lunch out with Mama
• a trip to bowling (for Mugger) or to the bounce house (for Bug) with Papa
• a trip to the bookstore with Mama
• an outing outside with Papa
• an outing to an inside destination with Mama

And then, since I had extra coupons left, I made up a few more for one-on-one time with Papa or Mama in the form of a project:

• baking cookies with Mama
• cooking a meal with Papa
• a craft project with Mama
• a wood project with Papa

So that's the list! It could take us until next Valentine's Day to get through them all, but I'm hoping that they'll enjoy them enough that they'll want a repeat next year anyways.

Painting Eggs

Mugger and I decided we needed a spring craft project, so we were thrilled to find wooden eggs at the craft store, especially once I told him that we could keep them from year to year and not have to throw them out like dyed ones. I had painted them all white to give them a base to paint on, so today we were finally ready to paint. Here's our progress so far-- I think I'll wait to post the finished masterpieces until Easter...

Busy Boys *updated*

I wasn't home today to catch it on camera, but Mugger is now a proficient painter as well-- he and Papa decided to tackle the bathroom and should have it finished up tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get pix then and post them here!

Updated 4/23: OK, so I finally got the pic off the camera-- here's our busy painter:

Mugger our Busy Boy

For being sick twice in the past 2 weeks (a strep throat diagnosis on Good Friday and a Fifths disease diagnosis on Sunday), Mugger sure was a busy boy over his Easter break!First on his project list was inventing a game! Here he is playing "Tossbox" with Nonnie and Gramps on Easter. He came up with very elaborate rules, which he had me type up to paste in the lid of the box. Basically you get to toss a bead into the little boxes (the smaller boxes are worth more points), but how many tosses you get is determined by which card you draw-- he even came up with a "lose a toss" card!
Because the kiddos got a bucket of bulbs from Grandma and Grandpa for Easter, we spent Easter Monday weeding and planting most of the bulbs (all we had room for, at least.) Project #2 took the entire morning, but he was quite pleased with the results and is looking forward to seeing the growth that will come.
Project #3 was an alphabet book-- above is the cover shot which we almost used for the "x" page (for Xtra Goofy Kiddos.) My personal favorite was the "p" page for Papa since we got such a good picture of him.
Mugger's final project of Easter Break is an ongoing one. He's become quite the puzzle master! Now that he's almost 5, we've decided that he can have an hour of Quiet Time every afternoon instead of a nap, and the option he almost always picks for that hour is puzzles. Thanks to Nonnie's eBay sleuthing, he now has 2 drawers full of puzzles in his room to choose from. So far he's up to doing 100-piece puzzles by himself.
Such a happy, busy boy our Mugger is!