our tree of love

It has become a tradition in our house to leave the Christmas tree up until after Valentine's Day.  I'm sure this might sound a little loopy to some, but we enjoy it. It makes all of the retrieving of the clunky thing from the attic and setting up and fluffing of all the branches so much more worth the effort!


Last year I made paper snow flakes to decorate for the winter.

The first year we decided not to put the tree away I bought some heart shaped ornaments to create our "tree of love".  This year, my friend Jen posted a craft project on her website I thought was just adorable.  I didn't have on hand the supplies she used in her project so I improvised and used left over craft foam hearts from last year's Valentine's for Colton's class.


I made three different designs, not on purpose but because I had limited supplies and had to improvise to make enough.

This one has 2 small foam sticker hearts on top. Leaving the pink alone as background, I cut around the edge of the purple heart with pinking shears and cut the red heart even smaller with the shears.  I cut the top off of a second purple heart and hot glue was used to secure all of the pieces together to create a "pocket" between the two purple layers by gluing along the left and right edges only.  Then I glued the red small heart onto the top purple (top cut off) heart only.

This one was created by cutting the top light pink heart across the top and then flipping over the top part of the top heart.  Pocket is between the two light pink layers.

This was probably the simplest of them all.  I simply cut with pinking shears around the red heart, folded the top over and glued it down, then placing one hand between the two hearts to ensure space for notes glued it to the purple along the right and left edges only.  Lastly, curling ribbon was glued to the back of each heart to hang on the tree.

Now comes the best part!  Filling these pockets with love.  I wanted to include Alicia (SIL) and Austin (nephew), and having 5 hearts on the tree makes it that much more full of LOVE!

Ordinary copy paper is cut from the heart form to create a note pad for writing.

I expected to have to give some examples to the two boys (since writing love notes is not a normal practice at our house), but they hardly needed any instructions and to my surprise were happy and willing participants.

Pockets full of love...

Of course, we should always be telling our loved ones each and every day how much we love them, but Valentine's day is a great excuse to do it in a new and crafty way.  It doesn't have to be expensive or include a ton of sugar, just the kind of {sugar} we all desire from one another on a daily basis in a little neater package.  Happy Valentine's Day!