My mother was one of the “crafty” moms. My sister and I always had bows and socks that matched a sweatshirt or a T-shirt and they had ribbons or bows or paint on them and I assure you that we had all made them together and a good time was had by all.

Hey. Stop rolling your eyes. It was the eighties and we were the height of pre-teen fashion. You would have been jealous and then you would have gone out and spent fifty bucks on the same shirt when you could have just come to a T-shirt party at my house and made your own. (Yes, there were parties. Did I neglect to mention that?)

But do you remember in elementary school how everyone brought Valentines for everyone else and you walked around the class and delivered them to the little boxes you had spent the entire last week making and it was a Big Deal? All the little Snoopy and Holly Hobbie Valentines?

Yeah… we made those too. I don’t know where the pattern came from but I still make them exactly the same way to this day. Not as regularly as my sister does but when I make a valentine, by god, I know how to do it. And the three of us would spend hours in the days before Valentine’s Day cutting out red construction paper and attaching heart shaped doilies and heart stickers and writing in each one.

Because Valentine’s Day has always been big with my mom. We would wake up and go downstairs still in our Valentine’s Day pajamas to a kitchen full of pink and red balloons and streamers and have heart shaped pancakes and open little presents full of bubble bath and ribbons and cute socks. Then we would get dressed in our Valentine’s Day sweatshirts (because yes, we had managed to find time to make those too… I think we must not have watched television much…) and pack up our little bags of heart shaped cookies (yes, really) and homemade Valentines in their handmade envelopes (as a regular, store-bought envelope just couldn’t contain the valentine) and off we went.

It’s a wonder we didn’t have our asses kicked on a regular basis, no?