Valentine Countdown Advent Calendar

Valentine’s comes and goes too fast for little ones, so here’s a way to stretch out the fun, with a really easy countdown advent calendar. It’s similar to the Christmas activity advent calendar I made for my girls at Christmas, but this one is a little more low key. Each day they get to open a little bag and find a treat inside, and a fun Valentine’s day joke. Simple for mom, and still lots of fun for little ones.

I started out with a trip to the dollar and party stores for some little treats, I also shopped through the treat bowl at home and re-used some of the Christmas treats that never got eaten. For out treats I alternated each day with a sweet treat and a little toy treat. For sweets I used truffles, red and pink jelly beans, caramel squares, and some valentine chocolates, you could use what ever treat your kids love.

For the toy treats I included bubbles, pink bouncy balls, stamps, stickers, erasers, a pink and red bead kit, and heart shaped balloons. Here’s a little tip, at the party store you can buy things individually for a few cents from the loot bag section, so if you only have two kiddos to buy for you won’t be stuck with a package of eight.

I thought about including a little activity, or even a bible verse about love in the little bags, but in the end I decided on a joke each day. My kids loved the lunch box notes I found on-line and included in their lunch each day for Christmas, so I thought it would be fun to use some Valentine’s Day lunch box jokes for this calendar. I found mine here, and here. Just down-load, print, cut up and slip one in each bag.

To decorate the little bags, I used a heart punch to cut out hearts, and used a dollar store number stencil and a marker to add the numbers. Once the treats were in the bags, I used some pink thread on my sewing machine and stitched them up. I love how the sticking looks, and it also helps excited little ones to keep from peeking. I also decorated some wooden clothes pins. I found some sweet Valentine’s Day tape at Loblaws, and cut it in half to fit the size of the clothespins. Love how they turned out. I hung it all up on the fireplace with some sweet pink pom-pom yarn I had, and little string of heart shaped LED lights from JKSY.

My kids can’t wait to get started opening the little bags tomorrow, with a countdown to Valentine’s day, life really is a party!

This post is linked up at Craftberry Bush, Tatertots and Jello, Tidymom, and Whipperberry .