Valentine's Day Party Ideas

The past two years I have had a Valentine's Day party for my daughter and a few of her little friends.  So much fun!  This is pretty much her favorite day of the year so we try to make the most of it!

Our first party was for her and three of her best little boyfriends.  I chose some special pictures of her with each friend and placed them on the kitchen chalkboard...

Avery wanted hearts everywhere so I punched holes in paper hearts and strung them on ribbon as well as hung them from the light fixture...

I used more paper hearts and wrote, "Valentine, you rule!" on them.  I believe that idea came from Family Fun magazine.  I stuck letter stickers on the plates so the kids would each have a special plate.  I found some whistling heart straws and plastic heart cups at Wal-Mart.  The straws were a big hit as you can imagine...

I gathered up some heart stickers and let them each decorate a white take-out box...

I hid paper hearts all around the living room and they went on a "heart hunt".  Their boxes were used to collect the hearts.  Then we sat down to count how many we found...

We also let them go crazy with red, pink, & green paint and some heart stamps...

We had a simple lunch of heart pb & j's, heart cheese, and strawberries...

And for dessert, each kid got a heart shaped sugar cookie to decorate themselves with white icing and sprinkles galore...

Last year's party was a little more sophisticated to meet the needs of our then (almost) four year olds.  I added apples to the menu this time...

I took pics of the letters in the word love, a heart beanbag, and a Valentine's Day book, scanned them into the computer, and printed them out.  I glued them to pieces of cardboard so they could carry them around and know what to search for...

They played a game of "toss the heart beanbags" into a red bucket...  

I found foam heart photo magnets and printed off a pic of each kid to place in their frame.  They then decorated them with foam stickers...

I found different heart straws for that year and of course more special heart cups...

And instead of icing sugar cookies, they got to frost their own cupcakes with red frosting and sprinkles. A huge mess was made with the red icing but the kids loved it...

And then Avery exchanged valentines with her friends...

Also balloons are always a necessity at any party, of course...

Happy Valentine's Day!  

I'll be linking to these parties this week.

Happy Tuesday!