Our three little lovelies are all set for Valentine’s day. Found these cute free printables on Pinterest and printed them on cardstock. Even Bitty wrote her name on every single card for her preschool classmates all by herself! She’s been counting the days until tomorrow. Now we will have to start counting the days until Mardi Gras!
This year we decided to change things up a tad. Having made & collected a whopping 385 Valentine’s we were able to spread the love to a lot of folks!
After meeting a special little girl last year while delivering pillows to the local children’s hospital we’ve followed her online, cheered her on from the sidelines, and kept her in our prayers . Sadly in the last month Jalene’s family received the devastating news. After being the strongest four year old, that always found a way to maintain the most genuine beautiful smile ever through all of her pain, now has terminal brain cancer. Our hearts ache for her family. So needless to say Jalene was at the top of our list this year. We mailed her a box full of 200 Valentine’s as well as a few other goodies.
We gave 85 to a local VFW to distribute to Disabled Vets and split the remaining 100 between two local nursing homes.
As we walked into one of the nursing homes, Mad, our five year old, happily carried a bag full of the homemade cards. A gentleman that happened to be taking a lovely lady for a stroll stopped to ask Mad if she had a Valentine for him? He was so surprised that she really did have one for both of them as he had just been joking with her.
We are so thankful for all of the help that we received from friends and classmates that helped our lil monsters make so many cards this year. It helped us to give cards to little Jalene, disabled vets, and of course Maw-Maw’s & Paw-Paw’s. It also reminded quite a few kiddos to think of others.
My three little ladies along with their friend and I made some homemade play dough yesterday. All four of them ranging in age from 21 months old up to 10 years old enjoyed helping too. It was so easy and within 15 minutes they were happily playing with it and very proud of themselves! And it smells just like pumpkin pie!
ingredients:
1 1/2 to 2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
1 tbsp cream of tarter
1 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup boiling water
1 tbsp olive oil
Food coloring (or kool-aid packet)
Add dry ingredients in a medium size mixing bowl, start with 1 1/2 cups flour
The girls enjoyed taking turns adding the ingredients in the bowl
it’s also helpful to put the pumpkin spice in the bowl, ha ha
Add boiling water, olive oil, and food color, we used about 15 drops of gel food color this time. Then start mixing. 
And when you think you are done, mix some more. Until it becomes dough like. 
If it’s too gooey you can add small amounts of flour at a time. Then kneed it a bit and viola! Homemade play dough! We’ll be playing with the recipe to change it up a bit after the fall. It will last a few weeks in a sealed container or ziplock bag. If it starts to dry out just add 1 tbsp of olive oil and kneed it some more. It makes about the amount of 4 traditional size containers of play dough. 
