Valentine Place Mats
These valentine place mats combine two things we all love—creativity and clearing out clutter. All you need are a bunch of valentines and some contact paper. (You could also use a laminating machine if you have one.)
To make the place mat, cut a piece of contact paper whatever size you’d like. Place the contact paper sticky side up on a table and let your child lay out her valentines in whatever way she’d like. When she’s done, cut a second piece of contact paper, lay it sticky side down on top of the first sheet, and smooth it out. You can trim the sides to clean the place mat up a bit.
Your child will be so pleased with her new valentine place mat, she might even share some of her candy with you.
Made Me Smile / Tim’s Love Bugs
Do you remember when I linked to the Valentine’s Card Creatures on Made by Joel last week? Well. Last night Tim came home from work and said, “I have something for you.” He reached solemnly into his pocket and pulled out these:
He turned my favorite people into little Love Bug card creatures! They’re tiny little things, just a couple inches tall. And so very, very cute.
Do you see why I adore this man?
Happy Valentine’s Day / What I Believe
{ image from paper + twine }
“Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything.” Robert Rubin wrote that in his book, In an Uncertain World, and I know exactly what he means. People who are sure about everything astound me. How can they be so sure, I wonder. I add clarifiers to just about everything: maybe, it’s possible, God willing. I’m pretty sure I was more sure of things when I was younger, but life with Tim and our crew has chipped away at my certainty and made me realize that from day to day anything can happen.
Most of the time I’m perfectly happy with the wiggle room. But Valentine’s Day is not a day for playing it safe, even if my natural response to “Do you believe you and Tim were meant to be together?” is “On good days.” Valentine’s Day is about passion and holding nothing back.
So in that spirit, here is a list of things I believe for sure about life with my jaan-e-jaan.*
I believe that being able to laugh gets you through anything.
I believe that marriage is about forgiving each other over and over again, day after day, hour by hour. Sometimes minute by minute.
I believe little kindnesses matter more than big gestures.
I believe that you can learn something new about each other even after 20 years.
I believe that marriage takes work, even if the work is learning not to work so hard and to just let things go.
I believe that having children will wreak havoc on your love life, but that meeting each other’s eyes over your sleeping child has a special intimacy of its own.
I believe that having someone to save the last piece of pie for is better than getting the last piece of pie.
I believe that it’s okay to go to bed angry because you never wake up angry. (Try it, it’s true.)
I believe that sexy cocktail-hour stubble always works.
I believe that if you’re bold, mighty forces really will come to your aid. (And what is bolder and riskier than letting someone hold your heart in his hand?)
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you—I hope that someone made you smile today.
{ *We have the Urdu phrase jaan-e-jaan etched into our wedding bands. We’re pretty sure it means “life of my life.” }
Caped Cute-saders Valentines
Lily and I finished making her valentines today. She picked these Caped Cute-saders out of Family Fun magazine. They are cute, but they’re also really time-consuming. So this is not a project to try to pull off at the absolute last minute. But if you like the idea, file it away and you’ll be ahead of the game next year!
My patient saint of a mother is the one who sat and cut all those capes and masks out with Lily. I just had to help with the labeling and final assembly. Which still took quite a lot of time, but it was fun to do with Lily because she’s so cheerful about pretty much any kind of work.