Valentine Love Note Garland

A Valentine Love Note Garland. I know. It sounds dreamy and delightful [okay, maybe not dreamy though certainly delightful] but that wasn’t actually the plan. There was no plan.

At all.

It’s one of those moments when you see something — on sale — and your mind thinks that it will certainly know what to do with them later but you’d better make the purchase now because they. will. be. gone. and suddenly I’m the owner of a little bag of bags. That are little.

It occurred to me that sometimes I am an ornery person with rawr in my heart and the individual most affected by those kind of shenanigans is Handsome Dude.

He walks in the door [after a rather lengthy day at work] never suspecting for a moment that he might be eaten alive. [I would certainly prefer cookie dough but have somehow resisted the temptation and right now I’m wondering if I’m the only person who sometimes uses another occupant of the house as a chew toy.]

~sigh~

Any effort on my part to focus on the good and kind and generous part of another human being is a plus.

Those little striped bags became another effort to stop chewing on my friendly, neighborhood spouse.

No, he’s not always friendly but he’s the boss of him and I’m the boss of me and generous — hearted people don’t use other people for chew toys. No excuses. Seriously.

Here’s what you’ll need for your Valentine Love Note Garland.

For sure some super cute bags/envelopes.

Something to attach the envelopes to — that you will hang it with — jute, ribbon, lace, butcher string, any kind of trim mostly.

13 or 14 bags/envelopes, depending on how you decide to do it.
[I decided to use 13 and then on Valentine’s Day I have a different fun thing planned.]

A 12 x 12 piece of scrapbook paper/cardstock/even a paperbag would be cute.

A paper cutter for cutting the notes that will go inside of the envelopes.

A favorite pen.

Some imagination and a prayer in your heart that you will sincerely seek for things that will make it clear that you love the person you are doing this for.

[The bags are adorable, am I right?]

This next part may astonish/disappoint you so much that you will find yourself unable to utter a word. I personally think it’s clever.

I like those little striped guys. They are made from a sturdy card stock which means I’ll probably want to use them again.

Which also means glue would be annoying and a pain to remove.

Which means that painters tape is true.

[ And if Amazon has a product that I actually use, I’m going to link it to the product just so you can check out prices as well as the reviews — don’t just take my word for it although I am super savvy smart sometimes about a lot of things].

Cut thirteen strips of the fabulous stuff [this one is 2″ wide] and prepare for a fast [like magic] garland construction.

Measure how long you want your garland to be. Cut your string, or jute, or ribbon, or lace taking into consideration how much you’d like it to drop plus at least 5″ more on both ends to tie the loops.

Lay the darling bags front side down and begin spacing them on your pre-measured string.
Once you’ve spaced them out, and they look wonderful, start taping the string to the back of the bags.

Flip those bags over and voila! You can’t even tell we’ve been all clever and taped the backs to the string.

This goes so quickly, huh?

Now to the note card part of it.

You won’t need to cut a note card that is the same size as the envelope. It will help you by having a smaller amount of space to fill.

Whichever size you decide upon, you’ll need 13 – 14 uniform note cards.

Now we need to figure out 13 wonderful, delightful, genuine, crazy fun things you can write on the notes.

If you have a clever or fun idea about what a wife could write on those note cards, please say so. Please. I would love to compile a list and include it at the end of this post.

Here are some of the ideas I came up with.

I wanted the ideas to put a smile on his face when he read them.

Here are four of the bag, envelope before the note has been inserted.

Here they are with the notes inserted into them.

I added the extra fun of the pom pom trim I purchased last year just for the fun of it.

And there you have it. A Valentine Love Note Garland. Such a simple project.

I didn’t put the notes in any particular order. He gets to choose when envelope to select for the day. He’s been instructed that once he selects the love note, he has to leave it on the kitchen counter. Each of the notes requires effort on my part. If there’s a choice he needs to make in order for me to bake something, for exampl,e he needs to write the choice down on the note and leave it on the counter so I can do something about it.

He’s already picked today’s gift: “Today — everything you say will be right.”

It put a smile on his face — and that — ladies and mostly ladies and maybe some gentlemen — is precisely what I’m looking for.

Generosity beats the pants off of growling and rawring and eating people for snacks.

I’d seriously love to know what you would put on the little love notes. There are a lot of different options.

Happy Valentine’s Month

If you make a Valentine Love Note Garland, please, pretty please post a pic of your creativity. I’d love to see it.