coming in hot
love is IN THE AIR
Hope you all had a wonderful Valentine’s if you celebrated. My husband and I are not big on Valentine’s, but I try to make it memorable for our girls. See last year’s last minute set up here.
This year I knew I wanted their gifts to look like hot air ballons. I absolutely love hot air balloons. I have incorporated them in a few parties in the past. And my husband even surprised me with a hot air balloon ride in Bruges on our honeymoon.
I also knew I wanted to keep the cost low, as we just celebrated Christmas. So I bought them candies, heart shaped marshmallows, xoxo bath bombs, some bow earrings I got for a riduclously low price at J. Crew, and pulled out two coach coin purses I’ve had stashed away for about a decade. I used to buy gifts in twos for my nieces, until my sister had a third so I was left with these beauties. My girls love chocolate coins, so I thought this would be the perfect holiday to gift the coin purses with the chocolate inside.
My philosophy is that the presentation is more important than the gift itself. So, the hot air balloon would make these simple, inexpensive gifts so adorable. But I was competing with last year’s Valentine’s in my head, and knew I had to come up with a cute way to display them.
Despite getting a headstart on the girls’ classroom Valentines in early January, the day itself somehow snuck up on me. It wasn’t until the eleventh hour on Valentine’s Eve (that’s definitely not a thing), and after playing around with several ideas that I finally had the lightbulb moment. When the girls went to school, I knew what I would do. I would move my desk and a couple of side tables into the breakfast room and create an adorable Valentine’s window display.
For a friend’s baby shower a few years ago, I had made some hot air balloons and kept them to use again one day. And this would be the perfect day to re-use them. I also had a ton of fake flowers left over from Halston’s 4th and 7th birthday parties and knew they’d be perfect in the balloon baskets and on a couple of tiered cake stands. And my in-laws had brought over the girls gifts the day before, and we had this wonderful red velvet box of chocolates that I knew had to be displayed with more flowers.
So I bought nothing new for the display, besides the actual balloons. Those came in a pack of 4 at Party City for about $6. It cost another $14 to fill the two up. Even the pink gift boxes have been reused repeatedly since McCall’s third birthday.
I could not wait for morning to come so I could get started. I knew I had limited time, as I still needed to pick up the balloons, get Michael a card, turn the helium balloons into their hot air balloon gifts, move the furniture, hang the hot air balloons, and I had actual work to do (a design consultation) at 11am.
So when Michael took them to school, I did not spare a second. It came down to the wire, but I got it all finished just in time to pick up the girls.
Aaaaand…….they were blown away!