Valentine's Mailbox

January sneezes yield one good thing in our home -- I never have to look far to find empty tissue boxes to make our annual Valentine's Day mailboxes.

Several years ago, I got busted for throwing out what I thought were forgotten classroom valentines scattered across the girls' bedroom floor. I'd gotten tired of asking the girls to pick up the cards, so a week after Valentine's Day, I decided to toss them, figuring they didn't care very much about them.

"Mom, how could you?" Ally screamed, as she dug into the garbage can, trying to rescue her cards, grade-school messages promising true love and best friends forever, some of which were now covered in leftover bits of dinner. "I was saving these!" she cried.

After salvaging as many cards as possible, I wanted to soothe Ally's hurt feelings and offered to help her make a mailbox to store her valentines. So Ally, Brittany and Trevor gathered up Valentine's stickers, red, white and pink construction paper, markers and glue while I searched for three tall tissue boxes. Thankfully, with everyone suffering from winter colds over the past month, my task wasn't difficult.

We started by covering the tissue boxes with construction paper on all sides except the bottom. Then the kids decorated the boxes with heart and cupid stickers, flower stamps, and handwritten declarations of love for their favorite things before adding their names and the year.

"I want mine to be pink," Ally said. "Then everyone will know it's a girl's mailbox."

"Mine's going to be red, like Spider-Man," Trevor said, carefully cutting his paper.

Once they were done, I cut a 4-inch slit along the top of the box for valentines to be "mailed" and cut a 4-by-1-inch strip out of the bottom of the box. I then made a cover for the strip by cutting cardboard from an old shirt box slightly larger the hole and taped it across the bottom, which allowed the mailbox to be filled and emptied as often as needed.

"Now I can keep my valentines forever," Ally sniffed, still a bit traumatized by finding her treasures in the trash.

Now, we make our Valentine's mailboxes the week before the holiday, so the kids can take the boxes to school to carry their cards home. And I haven't seen a stray valentine on the floor since.