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Who wouldn't want to get one of these flowers for Valentine's Day?

I'm not a very sentimental person. I don't save cards, I hardly ever give them, and store-bought greetings make me gag.

So obviously Valentine's Day isn't my holiday.

But every year, I help the kids make Valentines for their friends. This year, The Girl and I made tissue-paper flowers with a wrapped lollipop in the center. It was a fun project for both of us, and I'm certain her Valentines will be unique!

(I'm also glad there are only 10 kids other than her in the class!)

Here's what we did.

Supplies:

- Colored tissue paper (8 sheets)

- "Fuzzy craft sticks" - or as they called them when I was a kid, pipe cleaners

- Green craft foam

- Scissors and a marker

First, we cut hearts from the green craft foam. Each heart would serve as the "leaf" on the flower, and on the back of each green heart The Girl wrote a name of one of her classmates. I adore her messy writing - it makes it real, versus from a parent.

She also cut each pipe cleaner in half, so each was about 6 inches long.

Together we cut the tissue paper into squares about five inches each side. We then took eight squares and folded them together, accordion-style.

We folded a pipe cleaner over the center of the folded up paper, then twisted the short end around the long end. We placed a wrapped lollipop in the center and wrapped the long end of the pipe cleaner around the lollipop's stick.

Then we carefully pulled each layer of tissue paper to the center, making sure not to rip it and to pull the ends in to the middle to make the flower as round as possible.

We poked the stick of the lollipop into the bottom of the green heart, name-side out.

And repeated this...nine more times.  

No, seriously, it only took about an hour start to finish - short enough that The Girl didn't get bored and walk away, leaving me to do her Valentines for her. And now she's so excited to go to school on Thursday and pass them out!