Our youngest son was living in Belgium when he turned 21. That is a significant birthday, you know. It called for special birthday measures. So, I put on my creativity hat and came up with an exceptionally and extraordinarily normal idea. I took a picture of my husband and I holding a sign that said “happy birthday.” Then, I e-mailed it to him.

Fast forward several years. I am now the grandmother of four wonderful grandchildren. My memory of what I did for our son sparked an idea of something that I could do for our grandchildren — send them a digital Valentine’s Day greeting.

I had my dear husband take pictures of me and my little Valentine’s Day greeting.

Here are the pictures. (Don’t mind that the background lighting is different in the pictures. And don’t mind that my bangs are in a funky V-shape.  I should have fixed all that in Photoshop . . .)

So here are various ways that you could send a digital Valentine’s Day greeting to your grandchildren:

• Take pictures like I did and e-mail them to your grandchildren.
• Take every other picture of grandpa holding a Valentine’s Day sign (so there would be two pictures of you and two of grandpa) and e-mail the pics to the grandkiddos.
• Take one picture with both you and grandpa in the picture and e-mail it.
• Take just one picture with your Valentine’s Day greeting to your grandchild and e-mail.
• If you have a blog, post the picture/pictures on your blog and tell your grandchildren to read your blog.
• Print the pictures on paper and snail mail the pics to the grands.
• Insert the picture/pictures in a letter, print the letter, and snail mail it off.

Wanna see a blooper?  After my husband took the first picture, I reviewed it and deemed that he needed to take it again. So he did.  Here’s the second picture.  Notice anything different?

Oops!

This got me thinking. For older grandchildren, why not hold your message upside down? That would make it playful and fun. You might want to have your husband take your picture in the mirror. Then, your grandchild would have to hold the picture up to the mirror to read your message.

I thought that I would help you out a bit and make it easy for you to do this activity.  Here’s a PDF file with three Valentine greetings already created for you.  They all say the same thing but use three different types of fonts. All you have to do is print it up and use it for your little photo shoot.

Here’s a PDF file with Valentine clip art that you can print up and use for your own personal message. Here’s a PDF file with graphics that say Be Mine and a page with a Valentine border.

I hope you have fun creating your digital Valentine’s Day greeting for your grandchildren!

Valentine’s Day always sneaks up on me and catches me unaware. But I have a good reason.

When my children were growing up, my state-of-Valentine’s-Day-unawareness started with Halloween, ramped up at Thanksgiving, and kicked into a frenzy because of Christmas. Just a mere two weeks after Christmas, I had to put on a birthday extravaganza for our youngest son and then in a couple of weeks do a birthday bash for our daughter. And Valentine’s Day was 5 short days after her birthday.

So what’s your excuse now, bucko? Your kids are grown and married and you don’t throw them birthday parties anymore?

Hush yo’ mouth!

I decided this year that I would be ready for Valentine’s Day much sooner than 5 days before.  So, here it is — 20 whopping days before!  Aren’t you impressed? I thought you would be.

Two things.  As I was going through old V-Day posts, I realized that I didn’t post the Valentine’s Day bingo sheets under my free resources.  I made them three years ago — and had good intentions of putting them on my resource page.  Somehow, they didn’t arrive there.  Shame, shame, shame on me.  I’ve repented and have put it there now.  Or, you can get the Valentine’s Day Bingo here.

Second, since I have lots of new readers, I want to make sure they see this idea that Gramma Kathy had for Valentine’s Day mailboxes for her grandchildren. If you want to do something similar, you need to be looking for the items NOW! And that is the reason that I tried so hard this year to think about Valentine’s Day before February 10th.

Do any of you have fun Valentine’s Day activities you have done with your grandchildren? Please feel free to comment and share your ideas.

Oh my! I just stumbled across the most fabulous site! It has brightened my day immensely. And just in time for Valentine’s Day, too.

Do you have an endearing term that you call someone that you love? (In the first years of our marriage, my sweet husband often referred to me a Buckwheat. Romantic, eh?) Now, here’s a way that I can get back at him return the loving pet name.

I went to the site Cutesy Pet Name Generator and typed in Craig’s name. Here is the pet name it generated for him.

Camel  muffins! Camel muffins! I laughed and laughed and laughed. And laughed.

You can generate gangsta names, taxi driver names, Mexican names, and pirate names. Fun, fun, fun. Sit with your grandchild at the computer, go to Cutesy Pet Name Generator, and see what fun names you can come up with. Or generate the names and send your grandsnookums an e-Valentine and address them by their new name.

Oh Camel Muffins, I think I love you . . . (Sing THAT to the tune Wild Thing by the Troggs!)

(We pause a moment for my heaving bosom and panting breath to calm . . .)

There. All better now. Upward and onward.

One of my readers made a comment on my last post. She shared a link to some cute, cute, cute Valentine’s Day bookmarks.

I’m not sure if you, Dear Reader, might have seen her comment.

So, here is a link to her free bookmarks to download, print, and enjoy. Thank you, thank you Eileen!!

Have you ever done origami? Well, here’s a delightful heart you can make. There’s still a small moment of time that you can help your grandchildren make some hearts to give to others on Valentine’s Day. It will certainly stand out from all of the commercial ones everyone gives. Be sure to scroll down to see other examples of origami hearts.

A fun variation of this is to use pictures that you have taken of your grandchildren or pictures from magazines.

Have you got some empty heart-shaped chocolate boxes hanging around the house? Decorating the tops with your grandchildren would be a fun activity. Glue a photo of your grandchild on the top. Or glue a picture from a magazine. Get geegaws and dodads from a craft store to glue on top. Then, have candy that you can put in it for your grandchild to take home and enjoy.

Camel Muffins . . . oh my . . .

Oh my!  My face is as red as the Valentine on the left . . . (and it’s not because of all of the blemishes, either.)

I created this post and put in the links.  Then I clicked on the save button.  I did.  I really did.  Well, I could have sworn that I clicked saved.

Then I went on my merry way with a HUGE writing assignment.

Alas, when I logged in today, I saw that some evil gremlin had sneaked in during the dark of night and clicked the publish button.  All that my reader saw were ugly, skin ‘n bones URLs. No fancy wordsmith-ing of descriptions. No outpouring of my own take on the ideas.

Oh, I’m so embarrassed! (Can any of you grandmothers name the book that line comes from??)) It’s almost as if the mailman caught me in my undies. An ugly sight indeed!

I’m taking a moment now to gussy up this site. I do apologize for inflicting ugly HTML code on you. . . (Please tell me you understand. Tell me you forgive me. If you don’t, I think I’ll have to go eat worms. . .)

Heart Pop-up Card

Valentine’s Day Printable Stickers

Valentine’s Day Paper Craft

Valentine’s Day Count Down Calendar – This is a tad late (ahem). So consider this a jump start for next year.

Cupid Card

And then I read what one of my readers has done for her son’s Valentine’s Day cards. This idea is SO STINKIN’ CUTE!!! You have just got to take a look at what she has done! (Mmm. . . funny thing. She is not a Grandma . . . Mothers using my ideas. Imagine that!)

And then Grandma Shelley commented about her “Love is in the Air” post showing the Valentine’s Day craft that she does for her grandchildren. (And I thought I was doing a great job of cutting Valentines from card stock and coloring on them with crayons with my grandson. . . Maybe Grandma Shelley will be MY grandma.  Maybe she’ll come organize my home!

I’ll say this now (in case I’m too wiped out after I get all this writing done) and I miss you on the exact day:

Happy Valentine’s Day!