Wholly Half-Assed Valentines Day Cookies

It’s important to start holiday traditions early, when your children are young. That way, they’ll have years and years of memories to talk about with each other and their therapists. So, while I’d like to say that we have established some warm and fuzzy holiday traditions for our family, the truth is there’s really only one constant…

We ALWAYS half-ass it. Every holiday, every time.

Like, you won’t see any fun or scary Halloween decorations on our house in October. Last year I finally got my butt to Target and bought a few signs that say “BOO!” which you *might* see if we remember to turn the porch light on.

And, until recently, the only Christmas tree we had was a pathetic two-foot tall fake plant that we set on a table and surrounded with garbage. This year we had a full-size fake tree, which was great because Santa got lazy about wrapping some of the baby’s presents and this happened:

C'mon, Santa. Get your sh*t together.

And St. Patrick’s Day? My kids barely know that it exists.

Needless to say, Valentines Day has been mostly a non-event around here. I always buy little cards for the boys to give out at school, but that’s it. No heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast, no trail of paper hearts leading from their bedroom door to the kitchen, no “Love Tree” with heart-shaped leaves bearing messages of love from me to them. All of those things sound pretty awesome, actually, but…come on. WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT STUFF??

So, I felt like Mother of the Freaking Year last week when I decided we should make heart-shaped cookies for Valentines Day, using an easy recipe I found on—where else?—Pinterest.

And let me just say that “recipe” is really stretching the meaning of that word. If you do this right, there is almost no work involved. No mixing, no measuring, no sifting.

(No flavor, either, which is an unfortunate and somewhat important detail that I’ll tell you more about later.)

So how do you make these only sort-of ok cookies? It’s easy!! Just use the leftover pie crust scraps from your annual heart-shaped chocolate Valentines Day pie! Or, if you’re an “efficient” baker like me, use the leftover premade frozen pie crust from the two-pack you bought at Christmas that has been taking up space in your freezer since then. Use cookie cutters to cut out hearts, brush the “cookies” with melted butter, and sprinkle with colored sugar or other fun Valentines-themed decorations.

Hearts and...caterpillars?

We used green sugar, obviously.

Bake them a little too long at 350 degrees, then chisel them off the cookie sheet and let them cool. If you’re angling for a hot Pinterest-worthy photo, use some store-bought white icing to trace your kids’ initials on two of the cookies, then snap a fuzzy pic with your phone. Serve them to your kids, and watch their faces fall in disappointment as you all realize that these are NOT COOKIES, they are over-cooked pieces of crappy pie crust sprinkled with green chemicals. Put them in a zip-lock bag on the counter for a week, then throw them away because no one will eat them.

So. It seems that we have managed to continue our tradition of celebrating holidays in the most half-assed fashion. The good news, I guess, is that my kids are still probably too young to remember this disaster, so I’ll get another chance next year. In the meantime, I’ll just start pinning some fun St. Patrick’s Day ideas…

Never going to happen. (credit: http://christiepepper.com/?s=St.+Patrick%27s+Day)

Pinterest + Preschoolers = PAIN

Well, I may be the last on earth to do it, but I was finally hit by the Pinterest Plague. I bit the bullet a week ago and signed up. And now? Now, I have plans.

Big Plans.

Home decorating plans. Cleaning-my-house plans. Making-darling-and-incredibly-thoughtful-Valentines-Day-crafts-for-my-husband plans.

Lots and lots and lots and lots of plans.

For now I’m still in the research phase of most of these plans. It could take weeks, months, even YEARS for me to gather the necessary photos, infographics, and how-to lists needed in order to effectively put these plans in motion. That’s ok. I don’t have a lot of time to distress and paint old wooden frames at this point anyway.

But I did find one thing on Pinterest that I decided to try right away: an incredibly cute, easy Valentine’s Day craft for kids. Here’s the photo I found and the link to the website:

Click here for the original post

So cute and easy, right? My four-year-old son had a playdate with his best little girl friend coming up, so I decided to take on my first Pinterest Parenting moment and bust out this craft for them.

Well, as I should have expected, things did not go exactly as planned.

I got the kids started, and they were very excited. For about 30 seconds. Then, some things started happening.

First, they asked for other art supplies—markers, stickers, ribbons, stuff like that. Stuff that was NOT mentioned on Pinterest when I found this activity. I had misgivings—WE WERE DOING A PINTEREST CRAFT, not improvising some random art project like preschool hippies!! But I don’t like tempering a child’s natural creativity in general, so I went with it.

Next, they started experimenting. My son became fascinated with a glob of glue from his glue stick and began poking at it. Then he scribbled on it with a marker, yelling, “I’m dying it!! I’m dying the glue!” Then he used the marker to draw on his hair. Again.

Of course, distractions were inevitable. I’m not sure how jumping up and down, flapping one’s arms and shouting, “Look! Look at me! I’m flying! LOOK AT ME!!!” is part of anyone’s artistic process, but there was my son doing just that. His friend was unfazed and, after watching his antics for a minute or two, went back to using her rebel art supplies to do non-Pinterest-endorsed activities like coloring on top of stickers.

Finally, they finished their Valentines. Here are the results:

My son's valentine

His friend's valentine

Um, yeah. This would be MY valentine. Mommy, FTW!

At this point, my son’s friend became inspired and hid herself away in another room to make a “secret valentine.” When she emerged, she handed my son this:

awwwww....

Well, my little guy thought this whole secret valentine thing was a great idea, so he hid HIMSELF away in the other room to make one for her. When he emerged, he gave her this:

ummmmmm...

Apparently, my son’s “POOP” valentine somehow reminded the kids that playing with underpants is always a fun game, so they moved on from art supplies to that. To my son, the Underpants Game just means wearing underpants on your head and body and throwing them around the house. Like this:

He takes after his father.

So he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to his girl friend’s suggestion that they use the underpants for a more practical, organized activity: to make a treasure trail (duh). So then I found this in our bathroom:

I love how they are evenly spaced.

There’s really nowhere to go but down after fun like that, is there? Thankfully, my friend showed up to claim her daughter right about then, so we’ll never know what might have happened next.