sweet valentine

This weekend we were away at a retreat in the mountains with the kids from our church. And boy, was it ever pouring rain! On Valentine's Day we had a special dinner where everyone got dressed up -- so to do something a little special, I created goodie bags on a budget. Before getting to the retreat center, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up 100 brown paper bags for $3.75 and a tiny lined notebook for 79 cents. I brought some red cardstock with me and a whole bunch of pink and red candies from the Asian supermarket. I had lychee gummies, strawberry gummies, peach gummies, thin strawberry cream wafers, rice crackers, and haw flakes.

Two of the other counselors helped me to cut out hearts and stuff the bags, while I wrote a Bible verse onto 45 pieces of notebook paper. Then I took out the rings of the notebook so I didn't have to rip the pages out, and paired it with the cardstock hearts. Then we stapled the bags closed. Here's what we ended up with:


I would have liked to have printed the verse on the paper, but this still came out as I had envisioned. Simple, fun, and super cheap!