Tomorrow morning Gracen is having a handful of little friends (and their mamas) over for a Valentine’s Day tea, so this afternoon was all about party prep. We ran errands, picked up some groceries, cleaned house, and got things ready for her pint-sized guests.
Gracen helped out by testing out the mural paper I hung on the wall while she was napping.
Then we headed outside to do our usual sidewalk chalk thing.
Gracen is all about hearts and stars right now, so she was quite pleased that we were filling our walk with all hearts of all shapes and sizes.
Now let’s just hope it doesn’t rain overnight!
Today we spent our afternoon doing a bunch of little art projects for Valentine’s Day.
Gracen happily drew a “picture” on the back of each of her little friends’ cards.
All we have to do tomorrow is attach the 
Our next project involved punching out hundreds of little paint chip hearts… Technically Grae wasn’t the one doing the punching, but she was a great assistant.
Her real job was getting each little heart into this container for safe keeping. Of course this job was right up her alley because it involved transferring objects from one place to another. Little weirdo.
And while all those paper hearts kept Miss G busy, I worked on some Valentine’s Day hair clips for Grae and her little cousin, Kinslee.
Our last project of the afternoon involved a wax / watercolour resist. First, Gracen scribbled all over white card stock with white crayons…
Then we cut out a bunch of hearts, taped them down to some plastic, and painted them using homemade watercolours.
It took a minute for Grae to really get into the painting part (at first she was squeezing and shaking the paint out of the brush), but once she got the idea, she went for it.
Tada! Another masterpiece by Miss G. :) We’ll let them dry overnight and tomorrow she’ll hang them up on her bedroom door. And just in time. Only 3 days left!
Now the project actually calls for old broken crayon chunks, but since our collection wasn’t large enough yet, we supplemented with some new crayons too. Gracen was an excellent paper peeler.
She was also in charge of breaking the crayons into chunks.
Then I helped by chopping them up into smaller chunks with a knife.
Then we stuffed our heart shaped mold as full as it could be.
We popped the whole thing into a warm oven…
And watched the crayons slowly melt.
And before long, it was time to take them out.
We let them cool a while and then popped them out of the molds.
Presto! Heart-shaped crayons. Very simple, but made with love. Tomorrow we’ll work on the cards to attach them to…
This little parcel arrived for Grae first thing this morning…
Of course, she wasted no time opening it.
Inside, Gracen found all kinds of pretty Valentine’s things from her “Manmaw” Charlotte.
Including this Valentine’s stamp set. When you see red splotches all over Gracen’s face and hands in the next few days, you’ll know why. :)
Gracen got the sweetest little Valentine’s package ever today! Her cousins, Auntie, and Uncle sent her a Dr. Seuss board book and this adorable ‘5 little thumb buddies