I hope that this post will not give you the impression that I disapprove of candy at Valentine’s Day, or that I avoid it. FAR FROM IT. I give my own kids a candy gift, and I like that they come home with a little assortment of treats from school, too: it’s nice to have a candy holiday in between Christmas and Easter, just to keep the spirits up in the cold sad part of winter.

But I know enough from seeing/hearing OTHER people discuss it that not everyone is of the same mind. For those who are trying to avoid candy for various reasons but still would like to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a gift for the kids, here are a few ideas:

Sticky Mosaics heart box (photo from Amazon.com). I have mentioned Sticky Mosaics often enough that you already know we’re fans at my house. This heart box is a fun project we’ve also given as birthday-party gifts.

Hide ‘n’ Peek Chocolates game (photo from Amazon.com). If you look at the reviews, you’ll see that a lot of people thought this was a good Valentine’s Day gift for a child, and that unfortunately there is one main problem with it: the lid doesn’t fit on right. So it kind of depends on how important that feature is for the game to be a success. If you’re going to store it in a bin anyway (if you’re like me and wouldn’t want to assemble the toy every time you put it away, for example), it won’t matter—but it might be disappointing anyway.
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One of my favorite days of the year when I was a child was Valentine’s Day. Decorating the cereal box mailbox with doilies and hearts and stickers was one of my favorite crafts. And the concept of “If you bring valentines, you have to bring one for everyone” must have been established by then—or in any case, I don’t have any traumatizing memories of not getting as many valentines as other people. There was the inevitable “Someone got a BETTER and/or more SIGNIFICANT valentine”—but deciding what makes a valentine good/significant is Big Fun for some of us. (Fortunately, classroom valentines are over by the time there are serious hormones to consider.)

Little Owl valentine cards by Letter C Design on Etsy (photo from the shop). We are fond of owls at our house. It is nice to have on-trend tastes: there is so much merchandise available.

Superhero girls and boys by LuckyLu Creations on Etsy (photos from the shop). The trouble with something hand-colored is that you pay extra for the hand-coloring when maybe you would have been just as happy with the color coming from the printer. Happier, perhaps. But I would have a lot of fun getting a set each of girl and boy superheros and trying to match hair color to as many kids in the class as possible.
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I had Thanksgiving at my house last year, and I’m planning to do it again this year. Last year was the first year I was interested in other people’s posts about what they were cooking, and I took notes: one person’s baked mashed potatoes recipe, another person’s roasted root vegetables recipe, another person’s pumpkin pie recipe. I liked being in the kitchen and thinking of how very many of us were ALSO in the kitchen, all making the same sorts of foods.

One of the upsides of hosting Thanksgiving is that I can buy a few accessory pieces: I have enough place settings of my grandma’s china, but I could use some new decorative things for the center of the table, some pretty paper napkins, more salt-and-pepper shakers. I’m not rushing it: everything went fine last year without those things. But it’s fun to have a gap to fill. At a consignment shop I found a good price on a serving dish in my grandma’s pattern; before, I would have thought, “Oh, it’s great, but I’ll never have a chance to use it!” This time, with Thanksgiving dinner in the future, I got out my wallet.

And when I saw acorn placecard holders at the store, instead of thinking, “I never use placecard holders,” I thought “Hey! I could use placecard holders! To hold placecards!” So it has been pleasant, is what I’m saying.

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My eldest child has outgrown Halloween. Or, more likely, he’s between the stage of trick-or-treating/dressing-up and the stage of re-discovering it in crowds of teenagers who make everyone clench their teeth as they go to door gathering free candy dressed in a garbage bag.

The other four kids are still interested. We have a loose costume policy, which is basically this: I vastly prefer they choose a costume from the bins of clearance costumes I’ve acquired over the years. But if a child earnestly and fervently wants a different and particular costume, I am willing to consider it.

What we usually do is start with the Thinking About It stage, which is where we are now: the children are considering what they might want to be, and I’m looking up costumes and going “THIRTY DOLLARS PLUS SHIPPING? For something you’ll wear ONCE??” I wish it were easier to know THE YEAR BEFORE what costume the child would want to wear the following year. I KNOW I saw Star Wars costumes on practically-giving-them-away clearances last year, but last year none of them were into Star Wars.

William would like to be Luke Skywalker (image from Amazon.com). Unfortunately, William is 5′4″, so he will probably need the adult-size costume, which is even more expensive than the kid one. Also, when he saw the image I just posted, he said, “If possible, I want to be the black costume, when he’s a Jedi.” At first I was dismayed, as we scrolled through page after page of Jedi costumes and all of them were “No, that’s Anakin.” But then we did an image search to see what LUKE’S Jedi outfit looks like…and it’s black clothes. It’s really just black clothes, plus a light saber. And William thinks he can make the wrist thing out of cardboard and tin foil. So that’s manageable: I can buy the light saber and make sure he has a black shirt and that’s it.
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Some of my kids (okay, just Elizabeth) like to wear outfits that coordinate with holidays. But it turns out that a shirt that says “Happy Valentine’s Day!” only works one day a year. So my favorite way to handle things is to buy clothing that can be used for the holiday—but doesn’t necessarily look holidayish after the day has passed. There are plenty of little-girl clothing items with hearts on them, so if I get heart tights and a shirt with a heart on it and a pink or red skirt, she’s dressed for the Valentine’s Day party but can still use those pieces on other days with other clothes.

Same with 4th of July: I like flag shirts TOO, but a “July 4th 2012!” flag shirt is not quite as fully wonderful on July 5th. Red shirt + blue skirt + anything with a star or stripe on it = sensible things that can go into regular rotation afterward.

For example, the Boden red/white/blue floral shirt (photo from BodenUSA.com). On July 4th or Memorial Day with other red/white/blue clothes, this is going to look patriotic as heck. On July 5th with jeans, it’s just a cute summer shirt.
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Can we talk a little about what we did for Father’s Day THIS year, so that we can refer to it NEXT year? I’d wanted to do a post on Father’s Day gift ideas last week, but I felt too discouraged, and also Paul reads here sometimes and I didn’t want to give away his gift idea. And of course all the store gift ideas are like “Barbecue! Golf! Beer! Sports! Tools! Here’s the perfect idea but it’s $250!”

I was lucky this year, because I thought of an idea for something I wanted to get ANYWAY for Paul, and Father’s Day was only a month or so away so I bought it and put it aside.

Wireless Remote Locator (photo from Amazon.com). Paul is continually getting frustrated at not being able to find the remote, and I am continually getting frustrated about the frustrated searching, so this is really a gift for BOTH of us. There is a risk, of course, of losing the remote finder—but I plan to NAIL IT TO HIS HAND THE WALL.
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For Mother’s Day this year, Paul is taking all five kids out of the house for most of the day. I’m…not sure I can find a single thing to complain about there. I plan to buy a box of chocolates and/or a pint of ice cream ahead of time, and spend the day reading and/or watching TV. Then I’ll go to Wendy’s for lunch. Maybe bring the food home with me, just so I can eat the fries with the maximum awareness of not sharing them with anyone.

Perhaps you are not expecting such a nice Mother’s Day yourself? My boss is looking out for you: she’s giving away a $25 Amazon.com gift card to one commenter on this post. You don’t have to comment anything in particular, though of course we all enjoy reading stories of past outrages and disappointments! They don’t even have to be your OWN stories, if a friend of yours had a particularly good-story one. Come on, spill it.

In the meantime, many of us have a little shopping to do for our own mothers.

My own mother greatly enjoyed The Cazalet Chronicles, a series of four books by Elizabeth Jane Howard. (Photo from Amazon.com.) The Light Years (careful: there are a bunch of other books with the same name) is first, followed by Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off. The first thing you’ll likely notice is that some of the books are unusually EXPENSIVE for paperbacks. Well, perhaps it wouldn’t be wise to buy all four right of the bat anyway, until you know if your mom likes them. Get just the first one and see. Or maybe the first TWO, since the second one is the cheapest of all four.
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One of my favorite things about Easter is all the beautiful dresses for little girls. And the way all those beautiful dresses go on clearance after Easter and I can STOCK UP.

Vintage Dress in Sailor Blue Flower Tile (photo from BodenUSA.com), in sizes 1.5-2y - 13-14y.

Tiered T-Shirt Dress in Lilly Pink (photo from LandsEnd.com), in sizes 2T - 16. This looks super-comfy as well as cute—like it might be dressy enough for church but then casual/comfy enough for school and play.
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The first year we did Easter at our house, Rob was 2 years old and very into rabbits. VERY into rabbits. Soooooooooo into rabbits. He hadn’t been very into stuffed animals yet (he was a blankie type), but we were pretty sure he’d flip over a stuffed rabbit. So we bought him one, and it was the love of his life. And I SO WISH I could still find those same rabbits, because we bought him three more of them over the years (one brown, one brown-and-cream, one black) and they are just the BEST rabbits: just the right amount of beans for weight, just the right amount of flop for putting over your shoulder like burping a baby, just the right amount of realistic for a child who was a little strict about realism.

Wait. Wait wait wait. Hold the phone. I think I know one more place to check for them. …YES. YES!!! Toys R Us online still has them!! I can’t believe it! Do you think they’d be the same as before? I haven’t bought one for probably 8 or 9 years! But they LOOK similar! (It is a little hard to compare, now that ours have been loved grubby and thin.)

This is the white one we bought him for that first Easter, and this is the brown-and-cream one we bought him, probably for Christmas or his next birthday, after the first one was such a hit. (Both photos from ToysRUs.com. They don’t seem to have the black or brown anymore.) I’m not POSITIVE they’re the same, not without picking them up and evaluating them for heft and flop, but they look like they’d be good bunnies either way. And they’re buy-1-get-1-50%-off, so that’s $16.50 for two of them.

Anyway. At our house we are now at the point where we have to consider a new stuffed animal almost as seriously as we’d consider a new child: Can our household support yet another stuffed animal? Do we have a place for it, even theoretically? But if you are not at that point, the classic stuffed bunny does make such a nice Easter basket filler—especially if you’re looking for fewer candy options.
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The title should not cause anyone to think that removing the candy from the annual Egg Hunt is in any way a priority at our house. No, no. Please. BUT, I have found that the Egg Hunt is more exciting if it involves little toys or other items as well as plastic eggs containing jellybeans and other non-melty candies. (Our first Egg Hunt, when Rob was three years old, we filled the plastic eggs with M&M’s, chocolate eggs, York Peppermint bites, etc. Oh dear the mess, after those tiny little egg-shaped greenhouses had had a chance to bask in even the chilly sunshine of the yard. We had to throw everything out.)

In the past we’ve stocked the non-candy part of our Egg Hunt from dollar sections and party-supply sections, and we still do some of that. But as the kids get older and the years of Egg Hunts stack up, I find that we’ve “used up” most of those things: the bendy rabbits were a big thrill the first year, interesting the year after that, and now it’s sort of “Oh, the bendy rabbits.”

With some items, I gather them up surreptitiously a week or so after Easter when no one’s playing with them anymore, and pack them away with the plastic eggs to be re-used the next year: the bendy rabbits, the Easter-themed Pez dispensers, the spinny-lights thingies, the bunny-ear headbands. Not only does this save money and play-value and landfill feed, it can add sentiment to the items: “Oh, the bendy rabbits!! I remember these!!”

I also have some other ideas to consider. We don’t get all these things every year, or even close to all of them—but it’s a good selection to choose from. I like to buy things I would have bought ANYWAY, and then hide them for the hunt.
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