My boys are crazy. I love them.

At our house we really dig holidays, and Valentine’s Day is no exception. I wouldn’t say we have any official traditions for this one. But we usually like to involve crafts and food, and experiment with lots of ideas from Pinterest!

This year we made our own Valentines! They turned out super cute but they were a lot of work! So I thought I’d share our ideas (and our files) in case you’d like to use them too.

“BONE” APPETIT

One of my boys is mildly obsessed with the game “UNDERTALE.” The story behind that deserves a ‘parenting’ post all to itself, so more on that later. This game is relatively new, so when we went looking for ready-made “Undertale” Valentines, we struck out. No biggie! Let the creative juices flow!

My son’s favorite character, Sans, is a skeleton who loves puns. As my 10-year-old observed, “Valentine’s is a day pretty much dedicated to cheesy puns!” So, it worked out perfectly. Here’s what we came up with:

And here is the FREE printable: sans-bone-appetit-valentines

We made bone-shaped cookies to go along with these. You can find bone-shaped cookie cutters online, but I managed to snag one at a local craft store for 79 cents! It was the last one! Lucky!

My sweet mama came and helped me frost the sugar cookies–bless her soul! Only problem was … the kids at school thought they were dog treats. Haha. Oops!

If you’d rather do candy, you can find all sorts of bone-shaped confections online. We would have done it that way,  but we waited too long and didn’t have time for shipping. After running around several grocery/mart/party stores, I finally figured out no one carries bone-shaped candy in February–only in October. Hence, the last-minute cookies. Yeah. So. Moral of the story: plan ahead! Order online.

WILL YOU O-‘FISH’-ALLY BE MY VALENTINE?

My littlest is in kindergarten, so he was much easier to please. We found this idea on another website, grabbed the free pdf, and then adapted it. Some folks use fishy crackers with this design, but there are food allergies in Little Guy’s class, so we opted for Swedish Fish. You can find these yummy gummies in pretty much any grocery store. (Whew! What a relief!)

To get the original FREE printable I found, click here.

For my adapted version, use this one: o-fishallyvalentine-3
(I simply added a fish-bowl shape to the template.)

For both boys’ Valentines, I packed the treats in some cute 3 x 5-inch Wilton treat bags that I found in the holiday section at Target. I spent about $1.50 for 20 bags with matching twist ties. We opted for staples, but the ties would be cute too. Or ribbon. Sweet find!

FOR TEACHER

For the teachers, we did these. Again, staples are my friend. They held the lip balm on there just perfectly.

The boys thought these were pretty fun, especially because they were so big. (I used a full piece of 8 1/2 x 11-inch card stock for the background.) My eldest said when he put the Valentine in his teacher’s mailbox, it made it tip over!

TIME FOR LUNCH!

On V-day, we busted out the heart-shaped cookie cutters while packing everyone’s lunches, from ‘sweetheart salad’ to heart-shaped fruit and sandwiches. For small stuff I like to use these cutters, which work great for all sorts of veggies, meats, and cheese too!

What did you do for Valentine’s? I’d love to hear! We’re always looking for fun family ideas.