Valentine Tree

I have seen several of these little valentine trees all over blogland lately. My favorite is this one from Helping Little Hands:

The whole mantel is super cute and those crayon letters that spell "love" are genius. So, go check it out.

Ok, back to me.

I have had this empty white pitcher on my entryway table for, I don't know, 6 mos, maybe longer. Who really wants to keep track of those details anyway? The problem is that I have had this beautiful buffet table (craigslist score) for about that same amount of time and I have all these ideas floating in my head about how to decorate my entryway. Part of that involves painting the entryway and that is where it all falls apart. So, me being the way I am (and if you have read even a couple of my posts, you are learning that means all plan, no action), the beautiful buffet sits empty (with junk piling on top of it) until I can get the walls painted. I know it's stupid. I mean, just decorate and paint later, right? Right. It's 2012 people, I'm working on it.

So, back to my tree. It started with the branches. Oh, how I wish I had video footage or atleast a few good snapshots of the ridiculous "great branch hunt" my daughter and I embarked on for this project. I first went to the craft store to buy branches, because, again I do not have all the creative genius that so many of you bloggers have to make anything out of a piece of gum and a scrap of paper. So, it is not my first instict to think how I can just find something free to use. However, the craft store just did not have branches that I wanted and the ones they did have were expensive. Then, it occured to me that while this is Arizona and maybe a desert, we do have trees here. Lots of them. I can go get my own branches from an actual tree!

This became, what I assume, was a hilarious picture of my daughter and I running through the park trying to find a tree with low enough branches for us to snag. Which then turned into me boosting her into trees and there may have been some unsteady boosting which led to falling and scraping and my sweater and hair being covered in little burrs. You know, these things:

After what seemed like an hour, but was probably more like 15 min, we left the park with one branch. One. Measly. Branch. Later that same day, on a walk around the block with the family, we found atleast 3 more perfect branches just laying around next to the sidewalk. Do you see why I just go to the craft store? You see?

Once I had the branches the rest was a piece of cake.

I used very simple heart shapes cut free hand from newspaper in different sizes. I also cut hearts from red construction paper and glued them to the center of the newspaper hearts. I simply taped the hearts to the ribbon and tied the ribbon around the branches. I would have preferred twine or something other than the red curling ribbon. It would have laid much nicer, the ribbon kind of "curls" up. Duh. But it was what I had at home, so I'm going with it.

Now, I have one decorated item sitting next to a bunch of junk on my beautiful buffet entry table. I have some other valentine ideas for the table, so hopefully, I'll be posting pictures soon of the whole decorated table. Sans junk.

Thanks so much to Stay at Home Nation for featuring my tree!