Valentines Day Cards with No CANDY!

There are tons of reasons why parents would want to limit the candy on Valentine’s Day, but nobody wants to be a scrooge. We’re all concerned about our kid’s diets, their teeth, health concerns, and I’ve even been hearing that some schools have outlawed candy entirely. In my case, Atti’s in a class where half the kids can’t eat. Their disabilities mean that they get tube fed, so candy is nothing more than a temptation or a thoughtless gift they’ll have to throw out. So this year I decided to make valentines cards that would include all of Atti’s friends in the holiday fun.

I’m actually not a fan of plastic junk either, but childhood always seems to be a negotiation between different things parents hate, so since I couldn’t do food and I couldn’t buy a wooden flute for each member of his class, I had to embrace the plastic. The dollar store has an expansive party favor section, so I went through and picked out a few different toys that made noise approximating music. I settled on a kazoo, a flute, and little percussive hands that clap when you wave them.

Then I spent a while brainstorming musical phrases I could turn into Valentine love, and whipped these cards up in Photoshop to share with all of you. I initially went with a music theme because of the toys I found at the dollar store, but given how obsessed my little musical prodigy is, I think it worked out pretty perfectly.

To use this printable I’ve made for you, just click on it {I fixed it! You can actually click now!}. There you can download the original size, already formatted for your printer, or you can send it to a copy shop to use up their ink supply. And you can be a fun parent while still feeling virtuous. That doesn’t happen very often.