A Super Valentine's Day

I'm rewinding the clock a bit here, but need to get the Elser 411 caught up to real time.  So let's pretend it is just past Valentine's Day.

This was the first year that Jack took Valentines to school.  Rather than pick up a package of ready-made cartoon-of-the-moment Valentines from the grocery store I wanted to make something homemade that Jack and I could work on together.  Of course, I turned to pinterest.  It didn't disappoint.

Here are the supplies for Jackson's super hero valentines. 

The graphics were a free download on the web, so all I had to do was print the cape and masks on card stock and cut them out.  Jackson tried to help me assemble everything but it required a little more fine motor skills than his small hands were capable of.  Instead, I had him participate by matching the colors of the capes and masks and choosing suckers by color as well.  He enjoyed it; although, I think he enjoyed sneaking tootsie pops more.

 Here is the final product.  We both loved them!

Next up were treats for the classroom party.  Jack requested that I sign up for cupcakes.  Under normal circumstances I'm a bake from scratch kind of girl, but with my Palm Springs trip just days away, I was extremely pressed for time and had to settle for the box mix instead.  Jack chose Funfetti - what else?

I tried to spruce them up a bit with some gel food coloring.  Not exactly my best effort on the baking front, but they served the purpose.

Perhaps more fun were the cookies we made.  I recently purchased this message-in-a-cookie cutter and couldn't wait to try it out.

I whipped up 3 batches of dough in different colors the night before.

 That meant all we had to do was roll, cut and bake.

I used the recipe that came with the cookie cutter for this first attempt just in case the dough needed to be a specific consistency for the cutter to work properly.  As a result, they weren't exactly the best tasting sugar cookies I've ever made.  Now I know that my go-to sugar cookie recipe will work just fine with this cookie cutter so the next batch will be much better.  In any case, they were adorable.  I just loved the conversation heart cookies!

 Of course, the holiday wouldn't be complete without a present or two for my little Valentine.

 Jackson was very excited for his new red shoes and a baseball puzzle.

 Then again, the $5 bill from Gram & Grump might have been his favorite gift of all.

I think Jack would agree, it really was a SUPER Valentine's Day.