Valentine's Mobiles

At the ripe old age of 10, Caitlin and Ellie had mastered the homemade valentine. With the doily-and-glitter routine falling flat, we started hunting for another way for them to send their sentiments to grandparents and aunts. The answer was hanging in the kitchen, right over our heads: a mobile.

With no Alexander Calder genes in our family to fall back on, we found a straightforward paper mobile and adapted it for the holiday at hand.

Ellie switched out the paper circles for pink cardstock hearts. Caitlin opted to keep the circles, and adorn them with red and pink buttons and small hearts that she cut out of craft paper and glued on. And replacing plain string with red ribbons tied the look together sweetly. It took some perseverance to get the backs of the three paper cutouts to bind to the ribbon, but with the help of some clothespins and binder clips, they eventually stuck.

When the glue was dry, we collapsed each section of the mobile at the folds. This way, we could lay them flat so they were easy to send in small, padded mailing packages.

Valentine mobiles were winners as a fresh way to mail our I-love-yous. Even better, they're bound to get more hang time than the average card.