Valentine's Day Class Party Ideas

One of the things I think that I do best is recognize when someone else does it better;)  Case in point...get on over to One Charming Party and check out their Class Valentine's Day Party posts.  I'm NOT kidding, get over there.  WHY are you still reading this?!!  Get to clicking people!!  They have 3 blog posts already!!

Impromptu Holiday Activity Party

I am working hard this year to live in the moment this holiday break and cherish every minute I can with my children.  They are only this age for a short time and I don't want to look back and think why didn't we ever do that.  I already have some of those regrets with our oldest!  SO we made a "bucket list" of things we wanted to do as a family this holiday break.  One of those activities was to have a small holiday party with some of my girls' friends.  SO I planned an impromptu party for 8 girls and 3 activities and I kept it simple with food and had hot chocolate, whipped cream, peppermint sticks, bagels, cream cheese & juice. 

We made powdered donut snowmen...which they made and then ate:)

Using inspiration and a downloadable header from Eighteen25 we made "Holiday Bucket Lists". For these I picked up 8x10 plastic frames for $2.50 each, a HUGE pack of patterned scrapbook paper for $5 and a pack of dry erase markers for $6.97 all from Walmart. The girls LOVED it. They used the finished projects as dry erase boards to make lists, draw pictures, make more lists. I could have made these much cuter but I wanted to keep it simple and easy for the girls - and cheap:)

And finally we made holiday flour sacks/towels.  I posted about these here.  You could also just print out your TAGXEDO on cardstock and frame it as a gift:)

Holiday Flour Sacks with TAGXEDO

My friend "G" is the bomb.  She always sends me the the BEST activity sites!!  She introduced me to WORDLE which I love.  It's a site that makes word clouds and I have used it to make MANY gifts, cards, and all kinds of things.  I thought it was the best site...until "G" sent me the link to Tagxedo.  Tagxedo is basically WORDLE on steroids. It can make your word cloud a specific shape.  I know what you are thinking - WHY do I care about word clouds and what in the world would I do with a word cloud shape?!!  Well take a look at these flour sack dish towels my girls and their friends whipped out today. 

This project took about 15 minutes and cost less than $2 per towel.  I helped each child make a tagxedo jpeg file with holiday words they entered on the TAGXEDO site, printed it on iron on transfer paper and ironed it on flour sacks I picked up at Walmart.  I literally spent about 10 minutes figuring it out so the number one tip I would pass on is to make sure you click the ALL button - otherwise it will omit some of the words you have loaded.  It basically works just like WORDLE in that the more times you enter a word the larger it appears, you separate words by commas and you add a tilde sign ~ to keep words together.  After the short time I've played with it I like it better than WORDLE because  you can adjust how large a frequency word appears and it allows you to save your image as a JPEG file.  For holiday you can make your word clouds in the shape of a snowman, a star, a tree, a peace sign, the word joy and the word love.  You could also just print out your tagxedo jpeg file on cardstock and frame it.  Enjoy!!

Day Twelve of 12 Days

The last day of 12 days I usually do an "All Things Paper" theme.  This year I gave thank you notes, embroidered toilet paper (because I think it is hysterical - special thanks to Troye:) and a money tree (money being the extra paper).  Our teacher loved it!  I hope you had fun with 12 Days!!  How did you choose to end yours?

Day Eleven of 12 Days

There are 2 days left until the holiday break!!  Today is "all things kitchen".  Yet another gift I LOVE to give is "hostess gloves".  These gloves save your hands when cleaning dishes or around the house - plus they put you in the mood to get organized.  Slip them on and you can channel a little June Cleaver or Martha Stewart;)  I paired this with my favorite little glass measuring cup.  It measures teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces and milliliters ALL on one cup!!  I hope my teachers love these gifts as much as I do!!

Polar Express Prep...

Tomorrow is Polar Express Day!!  I've got 3 gallons of milk, some half & half, lots of chocolate and a couple CO2 cartridges ready to whip some heavy whipping cream into shape for the best cup of hot chocolate those kiddos have ever tasted.  I also have my secret weapon - homemade marshmallows, recipe courtesy of Ina Garten.  I made plain (white) and peppermint (pink) marshmallows today.  To see my hot chocolate & whipped cream recipes and get some quick party ideas check out last year's post - click here.

Day Ten of 12 Days

There are 3 days left until the holiday break and apparently I haven't given enough beverage items this year because I have yet another one!!  I LOVE these insulated straw cups!!  I have one from Starbucks that I use everyday.  This particular one is from Hobby Lobby.  It is regularly $9.99 and they are on sale anywhere from 50%-75% off right now!!  The straw even has a stopper so you can't pull it out when the lid is screwed on.  Hobby Lobby has polka dot and striped cups.