My boy loves stamps, stamping and being stamped. He came home from dance class this week with butterfly stamps all over his belly (what a long bath that made for!).

So I really wish I’d seen this tutorial earlier. Nonetheless, it’s definitely an idea we will use sometime in the future.

Instead, we made paper hearts. I have to confess I am a bit baffled by all the candy valentine’s you see these days. Chocolate I get, but when did candy takeover the world? What I remember about St. Valentine’s Day as a kid is the stacks of paper valentines.... my classmates and I would compete to see who had the bigger pile. So much fun to see the different shades of pink, and to realize how many different shapes a heart could really be.






































So, we drew hearts, and wrote out words like love, forever, favorite with my “fancy” crayons, in various shades of red and lavender and pink and orange on large sheets of draft paper. Then I cut hearts out the sheets of paper. So we ended up with hearts of all shapes and sizes with semi-random pops of festive color.

J loves stickers almost as much as stamps... I think all 2 or 3year olds do. So for his playgroup we put a handful of paper hearts and a small square of stickers in some of the red pouches I had leftover from our Advent Calender. These were a big (sugar-free) hit.

Now that that is over, I’m stuck on trying to avoid sugar for Easter. As a child, I received one large chocolate egg at Easter-- but that’s it. I’m not sure if we will give J a chocolate egg this year-- he seems a bit young for it to me-- but we will do an egg hunt and the idea of a special treat in his basket appeals. Right now I’m thinking that I will knit him some play food-- maybe a carrot, and an egg? Any other ideas for a fun, non-candy, small Easter basket treat?