Oh hey, another holiday is looming around the corner, BLEAH. I mean, oh, Valentine’s Day, my FAVORITE, I choo-choo-choose YOU!

(BLEAH.)

Please just tell me I’m not supposed to send in Valentines to my 3-year-old’s preschool. The teachers would warn us about this, right? Or is it just one of those Things that Good Parents Know About? ARRRGH.

While I’m stewing over the possibility of needing to make cards for a classroom of kids whose names my son cannot be trusted to accurately pronounce (one girl has been known in our household as “Prafarsha” forever, because that’s what he said her name was. FALSE), please enjoy some Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Guys, should you be shopping for the occasion.
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I am not exactly a professional photographer over here. In fact, I don’t know what half the buttons on my camera do, I can’t remember what an F-stop is, and the last time I used my tripod I caught my foot on it and sprawled flat on my living room floor.

But! I do love taking, editing, and sharing photos, and thanks to the tools I use, they don’t always suck. Unless they are of me (because my mouth is always hanging open or my eyes are pointing in two different directions or a fat roll has somehow snuck into the scene), or of my cat (because she always appears to be an amorphous black blob). I post most of my favorite images to Flickr, and one of these days I’m actually going to print some family photos and hang them in my house. REALLY I AM.

Anyway, my suggestions for turning out halfway decent photos without having a single clue about photography:

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You know what? I don’t like Valentine’s Day. It seems like there’s too much pressure to have some kind of uber-romantic, gooey day filled with expensive presents and chocolate, all for no particular reason. I mean, I’m not against holidays that advocate doing nice things for people for no particular reason (after all, as a godless heathen this pretty much describes Christmas for me), but there’s just something about the plethora of hearts and cards and ugly cheap jewelry that takes all of the fun out of it.

Since our household is still vibrating from the impact of having a newborn catapulted into it, I declared this year a collective Free Pass on Valentine’s Day participation. No presents, no flowers, no panicky last-minute shopping. However, as I was still languishing in bed yesterday morning feeding the baby, my husband sent our toddler racing into the bedroom to shout “HAPPY BALENTINE DAY MOMMY!” before thrusting a card in my hand. It featured some sweet words from my husband, as well as a few helpful scribbles from Riley.

Well MELT MY COLD BLACK HEART WHY DON’T YOU.

It got me thinking about a subject that’s perplexed me before: what do you do with your kid’s artistic creations, especially the ones you might actually want to hang onto? In honor of the more tolerable aspects of Valentine’s Day — specifically, the part where your children (or someone else on Behalf of the Children) do something cute for you — I’ve collected a few cool ideas for making keepsakes from such things:

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