Decorating for Valentine’s Day
February 9, 2010 by Marci
Until this year, the valentine decor in my house consisted of whatever my kids made at pre-school or church and hung on our fridge. Those handmade treasures of love stayed there the week of Valentine’s Day until another beautiful drawing was given to me to replace it – about a week. Things are different this year.
Usually, fall decor – all the pumpkins, gourds, indian corn, fall leaf garlands and candles – go up at the end of September when I have finally conceded that summer is over. The warm fall decorations stay up until the weekend after Thanksgiving. That’s when the festive Christmas decor goes up all over the house. Every room has at least a little touch of Christmas cheer. The house stays decked out until New Year’s Day. Then, the tree, the wreaths, the Christmas glitter is put away for another year. I usually keep the snowmen and greenery out as winter decor and that stays out until spring/easter decor goes up. Like I said before, I might have a bit of Valentine’s Day on my fridge, but that’s normally about it. Until this year.
I am not a fan of winter anyway, but my utter disdain for the season hit a little early this year. By early January, I had decided I had enough winter outside. I was not going to bring it inside! So, away went the snowmen and winter greenery. But now what? The house looked so bare! What holiday is coming up? My daughter said “We could decorate for Valentine’s Day! We could do hearts all over!” I have to admit, the though of having a house decked out in red and pink for at least a month didn’t sound appealing, but she was excited about it. We decided to find something valentine-like, but not over the top. Here is what we came up with. I think we did pretty well.
We started with a stencil and some scrap fabric. My daughter marked and cut out hearts out of various red material.
Dallas sewed the hearts together and stuffed them to make these little heart “pillows”. She embellished some with buttons. They turned out so cute!
I ventured out in the snow and grabbed a branch and stuck it in a vase. I wanted to put some beads or marbles or salt in the bottom, but never got around to it. It still looks great! We hung the hearts on the branch and it actually is sitting in front of our fireplace now – not on the kitchen table. I think it would look great with eggs hanging on it for Easter.
Do you decorate for Valentine’s Day? Are you sick of winter, too? How do you perk yourself up?
Comments (3)
I love the heart/love tree. We do a similar thing for Thanksgiving – branches from the yard with paper leaves that say what the children are thankful for. You have got my wheels turning…perhaps we will have a love tree for VD – thanks for the idea!
Does mistletoe still up from Christmas count??? lol.
I love this idea. I’m not much of a decorator but I ‘accidentally’ ended up with valentine’s decor when I took down the nativity from the mantel but left up some red and white glass beads and 2 red vases… a friend came over and said, “oh i love your valentine’s decorating!” and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I meant to do that.. heh heh.”
I think it needs something though so i’m going to go in search of a tree branch and get my daughter to help me cut out some red hearts. a simpler version (she’s not even 4 yet) but she will love it.
What great ideas! The hearts turned out so cute. I wish I was better at decorating for the different seasons and holidays. I do pretty well at Christmas, but don’t do much the rest of the year. I know my daughters would love doing the things you’ve shown!