Family Valentine's Day Boxes
Any time a holiday approaches I usually procrastinate up until the very last minute, don't end up making any plans at all, and then scramble to find something to do. Now that Mia is here, I know I need to plan better and work on creating family traditions & rituals for her. Some of my very best memories from my childhood are the holiday traditions we had, especially those around Christmastime.
So with Valentine's Day approaching quickly, I turned to every mom's best friend - Google - for help. At first I wasn't finding much - just the usual traditions of baking Valentine's Day cookies or passing out Valentine's Cards to the entire classroom. Then I came across the idea of a box for Valentine's Day cards for each family member. I took this idea and ran with it.
The basic concept is that each family member writes little Valentine's to the others and delivers them into the boxes. If your child is too young to write, you can write for them! So for example - "Mia" writes to her Daddy - "I love it when we have bath time and splash together"
Working on very little time I dragged the husband to Micheal's and grabbed 3 basic photo boxes - one for each of us. I must admit they are not my favorite (for example I don't particularly like the color yellow - and I would have preferred a pink box for Mia) but I knew that if I waited to find the perfect box, it would never get done. I didn't have much time so I just picked up some basic scrap-booking stickers - one sheet for Mom, one sheet for Dad, and two sheets for Mia because, well, little baby stickers are just sooo cute! I decorated only the front part of Mia's box and I plan on putting her handprint & footprint on the front. Each Valentine's Day I will help her decorate another section of the box. As she gets older the box itself will be a beautiful keepsake of her life & all her favorite things: the scrawled-with-crayon version of her signature at age 4; the Barbies she will become obsessed with at age 5; the dinosaurs she will discover at age 6. I'm not sure if she will still care about it once she reaches her teen years, but who knows, maybe it will end up plastered with the smiling face of the Justin Bieber of 2025. And when my other children come along I can easily dash out to Micheal's and get them a box too for their first Valentine's Day.
Then somewhere along the way I realized these boxes will be perfect for a while lot more than just Valentine's Day! Visions of beautifully decorated & customized boxes to be pulled out several times a year at each Holiday danced around in my head. These little boxes would be perfect for delivering & keeping all kinds of cards & letters to eachother. Mother's Day cards, school pictures, scribbled drawings, anniversary cards, Christmas letters, and more! When she brings home a macaroni art creation - into Mommy's box it will go. When she wants to make a Father's Day card with crayons & glitter - it will be lovingly delivered right to Daddy's box. And when I continue my mom's loving tradition of putting little postcards with handwritten notes on them into my Kindergarten lunchbox - hopefully she will want to hang on to those in her box as well!
By the time she is 18 all of our boxes will hopefully be bursting to the brim with important treasures. And her Daddy & I can use them too! For our letters & cards to eachother over the years. Who among us has all of these treasures but looses track of them after awhile? Do you know where all of your cards are? I bet they aren't stored in anything as cute as this!
*Pictures Coming Soon!*
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