Valentine's Day

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day and for the first time ever I'm actually excited about it. Not for lovey-dovey romantic reasons mind you, but because Ava's class at pre-school will be exchanging valentine's cards/chocolates/treats etc - just like on tv!

In Australia Valentine's Day is really just for couples. Here in America Valentine's Day is embraced by everyone in honour of all the people they love; partners, family, friends, classmates etc. I really like this way of celebrating Valentine's Day. Sure it's over the top and Hallmark and Hershey must make a fortune from it, but it's nice to think about all the people who are special rather than just one person.

Ava will be exchanging valentines with 27 of her classmates tomorrow (plus her 3 teachers) and as with every other opportunity to hand out cards we've decided to go with something home made. I was going to help Ava make personalised cards for each of her classmates but this was going to be very time consuming and a lot of work for Ava. Instead I decided that we'd bake sugar cookies for the class and print labels that Ava can personalise with each child's name. More work for me but much, much less work for Ava.

Now, in my opinion Valentine's Day cards and gifts must have the cheesiest wording on them possible; think "I choo choo choose you" from The Simpsons. I ran through a few different heart and cookie themed cheesy sayings before Ava decided that "Sweet hearts for my sweetheart" was perfect. Actually, she thinks it's absolutely hilarious and laughs like a maniac every time she says it!

To make our little heart cookies even sweeter we decorated them with coloured sugar. I think they came out quite pretty. They're also very delicious!

Sweet little heart cookie

Fresh out of the oven 

Front and back of the cookie packs 

Packs of cookies ready for Valentine's Day

Ava's class have made Valentine's Day letterboxes in which to deliver their goodies to each other. I'm looking forward to seeing what the other children have created. Secretly (ok, not so secretly) I'm hoping that we're the winners of the best Valentine's Day gift award. Ok, so there's no award and it's not a competition but we all know that I'm more than a little prone to competing when it comes to these things - even if there's no one else in the running!

Happy Valentine's Day!