My daughter is attending her very first Valentine’s Day party today.  Ah–what is more romantic than a room full of toddlers exchanging cards and eating heart-shaped cookies?  The party hostess, Audrey’s daycare provider, gave us a list a couple weeks ago with the names of the children in attendance on Valentine’s Day.  Of course I immediately went to work making chocolate-covered cherries, composing personal poems for each child, and cutting out doilies and foil hearts.

All right, I didn’t really make candy or pen sonnets–how could I, when I left everything to the last possible moment?  I did manage to create my own last-minute Valentines rather than buying a box at the store.  A few days ago I saw a woman on television demonstrating how to make some easy eleventh-hour Valentines.  She threaded a tissue through a hole in a cut-out heart and wrote “Ah-cho-choose you” on the top.  I don’t know . . . unless I used 100% post-consumer recycled tissue, I just wouldn’t feel right about giving Audrey’s daycare friends this Valentine.  (Although, on second thought, who needs a tissue more than a little tyke in the dead of winter?)

The tissue Valentine got me thinking: what natural objects could inspire a Valentine-appropriate pun?  I ventured outside where I found more dead leaves than I could ever need.  Affix a dead leaf to a paper heart and write “Don’t leave me,” over the top and you have a nice, albeit somewhat desperate, Valentine.  Maybe “I won’t leaf you,” would be a little more jovial.  The dead leaf creation could also function as an anti-Valentine: “Please leave” or “Leave me alone” or even “You’re dead to me” could be written on the card to ward off unwanted suitors.

I didn’t stop with dead leaves.  I soon found rocks (“You’re my rock” can be written right on any nicely-shaped stone with soy-based ink), sticks (“Let’s stick together”), and creeping thyme (“Let’s spend thyme together” or “You’re a creep,” depending on the recipient).  Portland also boasts many evergreen rhododendrons, but I couldn’t think of a clever pun to accompany it.  I’ll leave it in case anyone knows a youngster by the name of “Rhoda.”

You Rock Valentine

For my daughter’s Valentines, I decided to “leave” the nature outdoors and “stick with” the more traditional paper-heart variety.  I cut hearts out of a maroon shopping bag and old magazines, glued them together, and voila:

Paper hearts

Ever wonder how to recycle your children’s artwork (without literally throwing the masterpieces in the recycling bin)?  Even very young children can take a part in the creation of Valentine’s day decorations.  Joy saved some of her son Roscoe’s finger paintings and used them to generate some brilliantly colored hearts.

 Roscoe fingerpainting      homemade Valentine

In a pinch, other ordinary objects can also function as Valentine card materials.  Photos, comics, personal ads, old calendar art, ribbons, fabric, sheet music, and even old Christmas cards can be refashioned as a heartfelt Valentine with a little glue and ingenuity.  By using materials I had around the house (or out on the ground), my eco-friendly Valentines won hearts and saved the planet in one fell swoop–with not a moment to spare.