After we learned that we needed to make Valentine’s Day cards for B&B’s classes, I took a cue from one of their school materials: the Metal Insets. A couple of wooden hearts, wooden pegs, and wood glue later… TA DA! ‘Wooden’ Insets (all from JoAnn’s).

The kids have gone to town with these. They love tracing them, cutting the paper out, and writing something on them. This one is my favorite:

That says: “BIL LNUT.” Okay, they are still working on penmanship but it just cracks me up. About two years ago, G took B&B to a high school fair where kids could take pony rides. Bean’s pony was named Goldie and Buddy’s pony was named Belmont. But he couldn’t say Belmont; he called it Belnut. Shortly after that, I got them two stuffed animals: a yellow chick for Bean, and a brown dog for Buddy. We named them Goldie and Belnut. This would be Belnut’s Valentine.

Here is some of Bean’s handiwork:

She is mastering those scissors. Lately, for some reason, she has been writing her letters and words backwards (not here). As in, you have to look in the mirror to read it. What is that? She thinks it’s funny. It takes some talent (in my opinion), but it kind of freaks me out, especially when she laughs about it. Like she’s Dr. Evil concocting some weird alphabet that only she can read.

For Valentine’s Day, I found a Hello Kitty shirt for Bean at Target. It’s sort of ‘Hello Kitty Hooker’ — she has all this *bling* wrapped around her head and neck, but… whatevs. I knew the Bean would love it. I couldn’t find a Superman shirt for Buddy so I bought a plain navy shirt and made a Superman logo with a C instead of an S (using Adobe Illustrator) and ironed it onto the shirt. Now you know that his real name starts with a C. Our cover is blown.

He said he liked it… but that he liked S better. Grrr… Of course, being spiteful like I am, I make him wear it anyway. But c’mon, doesn’t he look pretty happy to you?