Valentines Photo Book for the Kids

Happy Valentines Day!  Is everyone feelin' the love?  Honestly, most of my Valentines-type celebrating has been done already.  The husband works weekends so we took advantage of his day off on Thursday and went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch - totally yummy and no V-day crowds!  The kids had their parties at school yesterday and the last minute Valentines to loved ones far away went in the mail.  This morning the kids insisted we wake them up before their dad left for work, so gifts have already been exchanged and pink waffles have been consumed.

I ran across this great idea a few weeks back in which the parents made their kids special photo books every year for Christmas.  Obviously we were past Christmas but I thought "what a great idea for Valentines!"  I didn't get them put together and ordered as early as I could have (in order to blog about it pre-Valentines and er, so as not to sweat that they wouldn't be here on time) but they did appear in my mailbox just in time yesterday - yay!

These are 8x8 soft cover books from Snapfish (I had a coupon) - there are tons of sites that do great photo books.

 I wanted to go with an ABC's of Me theme - using words to decribe the kids and their interests right now.

 Some of the letters were easy and I had WAY too many ideas, others were hard and I had to reach a bit.

 Tyler got a big grin about the boots one and said "oh I love those!"

 This one made me laugh - I couldn't resist putting that close up photo of the flaming marshmallow on there ;)

And there they are all wrapped up, along with the other book and candy I got the kids for Valentines.  The paper airplane is a printable I found here.

Best of all, when they opened up the books this morning the kids loved them and had to read them cover to cover right away.  Kaitlyn even said, "wouldn't it be great if we got a book every year?"  Hmm... great minds really do think alike, don't they?  ;)

Up on the Wall

 Remember this?  Well, I got it up on the wall!  (See Dari?! It didn't take 6 months! lol)
Where?  In the master bedroom, of course.  On that big blank wall by the bathroom.

 

I found I already had some photos printed, so I was able to make a nice little grouping on the wall.

PS - the hangers on the back of those frames drove my husband nuts when hanging them.  Not only are they each not quite placed in the same spot in the back, but the little hooks flip up and down so it was a real pain trying to get them on the wall.  We ended up with our faces pressed against the wall and a flashlight trying to see behind it to make sure we caught the hooks right.  I think it took us as long to hang these as it did to do the entire monogram photo wall in Tyler's room.

I'm starting to get excited about this room coming together.  I can count on one hand the number of projects I still want to do in the room - yay!  Next up is reupholstering a chair.  The fabric I ordered for it arrived the day before yesterday.  EEEEK!