Spreadin' the Love

So I'm excited to share some original ideas with you all!  You have to understand, these come few and far between.  Sometimes when I do get an original idea, out of curiosity I do a Google search (and now I search Pinterest too) and come to disappointedly find out that someone else came up with the same "original" idea before me.  So as far as I know, and as far as I've searched, here are some original ideas I've come up with that I hope inspire you.

Lately I've been into wanting to decorate our home with branches.  I went "branch hunting" recently while going on a walk with my husband and two girls and broke off three small ones.  I have yet to use those for an idea I have that I will reveal in a later post.  Then I saw this big branch outside near our home!  I think the neighborhood kids knocked it down.  Well, what they may have meant for destruction, I have found a constructive use for [smile].  I was encouraged this last weekend to start decorating our home for Valentine's Day from an old post on Sally Clarkson's blog.

I got the idea to hang paper hearts and red ball ornaments on the branches from when I threw my oldest daughter a heart-themed birthday party (since her middle name is "Heart") at a local park when she turned one a couple years ago.  I cut out all the hearts from pink and red construction paper and looked up quotes that mentioned the heart or that were about love to write on each one.  A friend who helped me decorate for the party is actually the one who hung the ball ornaments in the trees and several of our guests made comments about them looking like berries from a distance.

When my husband came home from work and saw the new decor he said, "That's cool!"  And then later he commented again saying, "That's cute."  I always think it's funny when guys use the word "cute" to describe something.

Quotes from Mother Teresa are among some of my favorites.  I kept this one in mind when I went to church Sunday morning.  (Note: the screen print on my Bible was done by an awesome ministry named The Death Defeaters and Crazy Love is a thought-provoking book from Francis Chan).

I used to hate Valentine's Day.  To me it was one of the few holidays that excluded some people (like me) from celebrating it.  As far as I could tell, unless there was a guy who was interested in me, I had a boyfriend or I was married, I wasn't going to get to celebrate Valentine's Day.  I had heard that there were moms out there who did special things for their kids for Valentine's Day to include them, which is what I decided I wanted to do someday for my future kids.  Well, one day I did get to get married and when Valentine's Day came around I was determined to remember my single friends and what it felt like to be in their shoes.  I remember meeting with a couple of my friends at a Starbucks and giving them a little heart-decorated lunch box I had filled with homemade sugar cookies and a handmade Valentine card.

I remember writing a list of all the single girl friends I could think of and mailing them the rest of the handmade Valentine cards I made.  I had some pink cardstock left over from when I was into stamping and decorated them with heart stickers and pink and red gel pens.

I meant to do the same thing the following year, but I didn't end up mailing out the new handmade Valentines I made.

I made these out of scrapbook paper I had leftover from some past project and decorated them with those leftover heart stickers, torn pieces of white printer paper and vellum quotes and words from some pads I bought for wedding decor a few years ago.

This year my list of single friends is short but this time a couple widows also came to mind.  I never thought of widows around Valentine's Day and though I haven't experienced that season of life myself, I can imagine they must feel a little sad too when February 14 comes around.  So hopefully this won't be another good intention I don't follow through on.  I gotta get these Valentines in the mail!