Valentine's Day is one of those holidays that always sneaks up on me. Much like my Christmas ideas, I always plan on doing really cute homemade valentines with my girls, and then suddenly it's February 12 and I realize I have nothing prepared.

Luckily, I've saved a few cute homemade ideas over the years, and today I decided I'd make 50 homemade valentines for the kids in my girls' preschool and kindergarten classes. (That's right. Fifty. And that's right, I decided this today. If you're thinking, "Hey Megan, aren't you supposed to be working on your book revisions right now?" You'd be correct, and I'll thank you for not mentioning it again, thank you.)

I thought I'd share these valentines with you too, in the (totally improbable) case that any of you have also been caught off-guard by Valentine's Day this year.

Note: These valentines do require just a bit of work. If you see these and think, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" Never fear--I've also included a few files of strictly free, no-fuss, printable valentines that are super adorable.

Here's what you need:

This free printable (There's also a plain version, and it might be fun for kids to color the flowers themselves.)
Card stock (I used shimmery card stock, because I don't understand why anyone would choose plain card stock when something sparkly is available, but you do what you want.)
Green construction paper (OR green card stock and this leaf printable if you're not as lazy as I am)
scissors
glue stick
sharpie marker
Tootsie roll pops

Once you have the printable, it's fairly self explanatory. Print and cut out the flowers. Use scissors to poke a hold in the middle, and stick the tootsie roll pop through it. (You'll need to hold the wrapper fairly tightly around the stick as you push it through.)

Use the green construction paper to make a leaf-like tag for the stem and write "From: Your Child's Name" on them. (Alternatively, print the leaf printable on the green card stock and then cut the leafs out and write your child's name on them. I decided fifty flowers were plenty enough to cut out and I would become a violent, angry person if I had to cut out fifty little leaves too. So I just cut fifty little straight-edged tags. Voila!) Glue the leaf/tag to the stem. I pushed my tags up pretty far so they'd also serve as a stopper to keep the flowers from slipping down the stem.

Skip To My Lou has several free printable valentines, as well as printables and crafts for other holidays. It's one of my favorite web sites--be sure to check it out if you're into that kind of thing!!

As promised, here are a few free, printable valentines that require no extra work aside from cutting them out! (Be sure to explore the sites they're from, because there's lots of cute stuff on there!)