Be a Fu-Fu Mom By Making Do with What You Have - Valentine's Day

The overachieving homemaker these days DOES NOT just buy a box of pre-printed Valentine's Day cards for their kids' class.  Oh no.  We're too good for that.  Really obnoxious moms make their kids bring in something to "wow" all the other moms...oops, I mean kids.

Here are some of the obnoxious and creative things that over-the-top homemakers are doing these days for Valentine's Day:

Picture with pop - more info on how to make this can be found at Design Mom.

Homemade Pops - From Family Kitchen

Ruler Cards - From Lil Sugar

Candy Robot Creations - From Prutsen

Melted Crayon Heart Cards - From PaperBlog

Well I want to be cool and hip!  However, I don't want to spend any money and I don't want more crap in my house (so I'm NOT buying any heart shape pan for anything).  My kids' schools don't allow food gifts - because obviously lollipops and conversation hearts make kids fat these days.  So I had to go with something non-food related.  In fact - I wanted to step up my game and get crap OUT OF MY HOUSE during this little project.  So I decided on a crayon project - because we own more crayons than the Crayola factory. 

First and foremost - do not believe the internet - you CAN NOT MELT CRAYONS IN THE MICROWAVE:

So my idea was to melt crayons down into multi-color crayons.  I have a heart candy mold - and some things that I did read on the internet said you can melt crayons in the microwave in candy molds, but nope.  You can't.  So I destroyed more crayons, cut them up in little pieces and used my mini cupcake pan to melt them.  I put them in a 200 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  Then they were melted and I let them cool on the counter top.  Used a knife to sort of pop them out of the pan.  This was relatively easy.  

I have a bunch of leftover cardstock that I had for a project way back when.  I used my large circular punch and punched out the number of circles I needed.  I had the 5 year-old sign the backs of all of them.

On the front with a Sharpie marker, I wrote "You Color My World, Valentine".  Isn't that all corny and wholesome?  

I had some leftover adhesive circles from a Christmas art project - so I used two on each mini crayon to attach them to the circles.  You can buy these if you really want to make these - they are much better than scotch tape.  

Voila!  Before long - we had our cards for 1 kids' class.  My handwriting isn't all that good - but whatever.  4 year-olds don't care.  

Not only did I not spend any money doing this project with the kids - but I used up some crap that was in my house.  Which is my ultimate goal in life - remove the crap from my life.  So sure - they aren't all heart-shaped or anything really festive - but I don't need a heart shaped pan or any other crap cluttering my already cluttered house.  

 Now I'm one of those cool, obnoxious, overachieving moms that everyone loves to hate.  I'm cool with that.