Valentine's Days Past: School Valentines

The Party Party is going strong and I must say that I have been blown away by many of the nearly 100 parties linked up.  You have until Saturday to get your party in for Chris (Celebrations @ Home) and Kim (The TomKat Studio) to judge.  Don't forget, there are 5 awesome party prizes up for grabs.

In the meantime, I'm realizing it's time to get serious about Valentine's Day ideas.  I've mentioned before that I'm not a huge fan of the commercial valentines you can buy and give to your friends.  Locally, I may be the only one, because nearly every year my kids are the only ones (or almost the only ones) with handmade valentines.  With the popularity of blogs and free printables, there are now more options than ever for cute non-commercial valentines.  I'm going to show you what we've done in the past and some links to new ideas for this year.

2010:

I still love this photo valentine, and we may do it again since he is at a new school this year. His teacher actually kept this on her fridge for months, she said! The flower was because sweets weren't allowed, but I LOVE the way it looks with his handsome suit.

I could do the same thing for his big sister, since she did the famous i-pod valentines last year.

I'd better not show them the new i-phone valentines Amy designed, or they may not be excited about the photoshoot I'm dreaming up borrowing techniques from our Christmas Card shoot.

2009: 

I was so excited about giving "Kisses from Kira" that year.  We put her face on stickers on some of the kisses, as well as on the treat toppers.

But "Kisses from Trenton" didn't have the same ring, so I turned his into a space theme, complete with alien stamps on some of his kisses.

2008: 

The flower dum-dums idea originally from Martha.

Other:

My sister made these sewn Valentines:

For more ideas, there is a huge list of Valentines at Living Locurto

Another great round-up at How Does She?