Annual Valentines Party

When our girls were very young, we started having holiday parties and establishing annual family celebrations.  We have found the creative side of ourselves while making each gathering special in its own way with traditions and activities our family can enjoy as we spend time together.

Each year my oldest daughter (now 13) has taken on more and more of the responsibilities of putting together our annual family Valentine's Day party. 

And each year she has tailored it more & more to become her own ideas as well as traditions that she has incorporated. 

One year she spent an entire afternoon creating "Val-opoly" which is a fabulous game of fun, and incorporates lots of hugs and kisses into the mix! Notice the pink dice, pink, red, & purple "money", homemade heart shaped player pieces, properties full of "sweet things", a landing spot to get a hug & $5, and even a "ticket to love" which will cost you $75!

 

Somehow when they were small I started them trying to pick up the little Sweetheart candies with chopsticks and it is now an annual battle against the clock to hold the title of Sweetheart Champion!

 

This year she has done lots of cutting and coloring to use for decorations and even gave me special candlesticks for Christmas so we could use them at our "dress-up" dinner.

She decided she wanted to make heart shaped brownies for our special dessert and did all the baking and cleanup herself. Now THAT is really sweet!

She also designed special invitations for each of us as well as wristbands for entry and instructions on what to wear! The wristbands used a special invisible ink pen which she "validated" when we arrived - what appeared were our names and a heart or diamond or club or spade. (This was used as a clue to one of the games she had us play later...)

 

She was very pleased when we all arrived dressed properly, with our invitation and wristband, ready for a lovely dinner party!

She had a guessing game ready for us on the buffet called the "Jar O' Hearts". Daddy won with his guess of 147 as there were 146 hearts in the jar!

She had 2 fun crafts for us to do. The first was to create a Valentine mobile with pipe cleaners. She had the supplies all ready and ribbons cut, beads in a heart dish and had made one the night before so she knew how it would work. A very fun project and they all turned out fabulous! Decorations for next years party!

The second craft was to create fish using hearts for scales on a paper plate. She had the hearts precut and colored, the google eyes, plates, and extra markers glue scissors and paper ready so we could just sit back and be creative. I was so impressed. This one was fun as well!

After crafts, (and major cleanup help from Daddy!) we played the final game of the night. Of course it would have to be a full round of Hearts! The girls are fun to play cards with now as they actually have strategies. We were all loud, laughing, giggling, and overall having a blast.

We all enjoyed the party very much and let her know how much we appreciated all of her work. At the end of the night, even the dog was exhausted but happy! It was a great family evening! Happy Valentines Day 2014!