The Valentine Mailbox

In a little while, my dear husband will be home for lunch, and our family will commence to open the valentine mailbox.

Yes: THE Valentine Mailbox. Your family may have one -- and I'm sure it's a lovely one -- but our family has THE mailbox.

It's the one my dad made for my family when I was a little girl. His printing company was doing some sort of advertisement for the post office so the front looks like the front of an actual mailbox from my childhood (complete with "zippy" the little zip code guy...remember him?). The box itself is an old flat kodak film box, reinforced with tape. It opens for easy mail distribution, but Dad also put a slit in the front so you can slide the cards in.

When the sweet girl was tiny, my folks passed the mailbox on to us. We have loved it and every year fill it with homemade Valentines (and sometimes a few store-bought, but those aren't the main attraction) to give to each other. This year the sweet girl begged to get it out a couple of weeks early, so she's been stuffing it for a while. It's going to be fun to see all the homemade love that spills out.

I've been so swamped that I didn't have a chance to make my beloved's card until a little while ago. While the sweet girl moaned through some math ("products again!? why do I have to do products?") I gathered scissors, glue stick, colorful scraps of paper, a magazine, a computer graphic I liked, and a velveteen bag of crayon rocks. It's amazing what simple things you can use to say I love you.