Making the house look pretty for my Valentine.

Okay, let's be honest, really it's just for myself. I don't know that my Valentine really cares what the house looks like.

My boys LOVE to have a craft to do so, the other day when my {almost} 4 year old (can he really be that old?) asked me to do crafts with him, I thought 'this is my chance to do a little decorating while he stays occupied with a craft'. I got to thinking and looking through my craft shelves, and I came up with a 'LOVE' banner and some coffee filter flowers.

(not so sure about my terminology here. These are just things I've seen around the blogosphere, that I wanted to try)

I love how my Valentine's Day banner turned out.

Inspired by these, which I posted last year, and the lollies I found here, I made this banner with brown craft paper, pages from an old book, small red heart doilies leftover from last Valentine's Day, and a glue gun.

I freehanded some letters onto poster board, cut them out, and used spray adhesive to glue on some Martha Stewart glitter.

Then I used tacky glue to glue the letters to the hearts.

I hung the lollies and flowers on a pom pom garland with clothespins.

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I think maybe one of my New Year's Resolutions should be to post more tutorials. I NEVER think to do step-by-step pictures until after the fact. I'm making that my goal-MORE tutorials. Maybe I'll even do my very first VLOG!

This time, the thought came after I had already made the banner, so no step-by-step pics for that, BUT I took a few pictures of the coffee filter flower-making.

This is what it looks like when it's done.

Very simple.

You need: coffee filters, glue gun, glue sticks, and a stapler

Start by taking one of the filters, holding it upright,

then you just want to scrunch up the bottom. Messy is good. You don't want them to be perfectly folded.

staple at the bottom, to hold the 'petal' together

You need six of these 'petals' and one regular filter to make HALF of the flower.

now flatten out the coffee filter and then just scrunch it up in the middle

Now it should look like this (below):

take your glue gun and just put LOTS of glue all over it.

one by one, lay FIVE of the 'petals' onto the glue, covering the whole circle.

Put some more glue in the middle and glue the last 'petal' in the center.

Now it looks like this:

as the glue is drying, I hold it from the bottom and mold it to the shape I like

Make another one of these.

Put some glue on the back of one of the halves,

and stick them together to make the FLOWER

VOILA!! .

I made the smaller ones using baking cups (cupcake holders).