Last minute Valentines

A couple of months ago when I was all knee-deep in Christmas cards, Christmas gifts, Christmas wrapping, yadda, yadda, yadda, all I could think about was how much fun it would be to start working on Valentines. The pink, the red, the glitz, the glitter!

Ahhh, but reality stands as a stark contrast to my fantasy. I have no idea what happened, but Valentine's Day totally snuck up on me! In previous years, I'd send beautiful handmade Valentines out to family and friends. This year, none. I didn't even make one for my daughter. Our (read: my) total lack of planning culminated in an emergency trip to Target last night where we could get the ingredients to make the little cream cheese sandwiches for Liv's V-day party at preschool, scrounge some candy for some little Valentine treats for Liv to give out at school, figure out some little trinket for the pre-school teachers, and then grab up some sort of little treat for Liv.

Wellllll..... the shelves at the Target store were BARE. Instead of Valentine's candy for her little friends, we ended up with snack packs of Goldfish. No trinket for the teachers. No little gift for Liv - due mainly to the fact that I think she has one of every kind of toy manufactured to date. I did snag up a card from the Dollar Spot for Liv, and grabbed a Kit Kat for her from the check out line. This, coupled with the "Pinkalicious" book I held back from her book order this week, made a great Valentine's treat for the little girl.

The little Goldfish snack bags looked great stapled behind some little handmade Valentines - made of stacked Sizzix-cut hearts in hot pink and shiny red (left over foil wrapping paper from Christmas). And the teachers got these little numbers:

The cards are made from Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip cardstock and some leftover patterned paper, along with die cuts of hearts and my newly acquired paperclip die. Before I cut out the paperclips, I used spray adhesive to cover some chipboard with the patterned paper. Here's a close-up of just the paperclip - isn't it cute????

I'm now officially in love with this paperclip die!!

Now, if only I had come up with this little gift about a month or two sooner, I would have populated my little Etsy shop with them in time for people to order them as Valentine's Day gifts - perhaps for their own kids' preschool teachers, right?

Ahh, well... There's always the next holiday, right?

..already dreaming of Easter themed cards and gifts that will probably never materialize...